Of Whiskey and Mystics and Men
by Sidney Sussex
Summary: Greg Lestrade and Rupert Giles have a past. And a present. Some things, you never really quite manage to shake. WARNINGS for canon-typical violence and brief contextual homophobia.


_I neither own nor profit from any of these characters;_ Sherlock_ and Sherlock Holmes__ are the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and the BBC, whereas _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ is the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the WB and UPN._

_If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome._

_De-anon from kinkmeme prompt:_

_"I found a note I scribbled to myself in the wee hours of the morning, and I have to agree with my sleep addled brain.  
Greg Lestrade/Rupert Giles.  
That is all.  
asdfghjkl, I don't even know where I got this but I want itttttt."_

* * *

He sighed, flipped up his collar against the biting wind, and spun a defiant one-eighty at the corner of the pavement.

_Well done, Greg_, he told himself, _good decision, yeah. 'I'll join the Met.' What were you bloody thinking?_

Of course, he knew what he'd been thinking. Get out of school, be shot of education, have a flat he didn't share with four other blokes, a pack of rats, and a constant haze of marijuana smoke.

_Yeah, that went well._ His flat was his own now, that much was true, but he'd seen postage stamps that were larger, and just because he didn't (often) smoke in his own building didn't mean his neighbours refrained, so the haze was, if anything, thicker.

_Peckham. Lovely place to live._ But where else was he going to go on a meagre beat cop's salary?

As he tramped down the street again, not caring when his already-soaked shoes landed in freezing puddles, a flash of white among dark coats and black umbrellas caught his eye.

Chap in a white vest, rebellious against the cold, leaning against a doorframe lighting up a cigarette. Flicking the lighter, tiny spark of flame hooded between his hands. Thatch of brown hair, ruffled negligently. Earring in one ear –

He cut himself off. He was looking _far_ too closely, staring really, if he were completely honest. _God, you're in uniform, Greg…_

He had to sneak another glance, though, as he continued on his way – and this time, a clear green gaze met his from beneath the ragged fringe.

Greg's breath caught in his throat and he quickly averted his eyes, but not before he saw the slight beginnings of an insolent grin curve across the young man's face.

_Get out of it_, he thought, irritated at himself. _You're on the beat, not bloody cruising._

He hurried away down to the other end of the street, not looking up again, eager for the last fifteen minutes of his shift to pass so that he could grab a coffee, put on some clothes that weren't so damned itchy, and get out and _do_ something instead of endlessly marching up and down the least exciting street in London like some blue-uniformed civil servant automaton.

* * *

When he finally got out of his flat, it was gone eight o'clock and the few streetlamps that were not yet broken cast a hazy yellow glow onto the wet pavement. At least the rain had stopped – good thing, because he was carrying his guitar, and he'd left his old, torn jacket behind on the floor. They were doing jam sessions down at the old dole house in Collyer Place, and he wanted in on it.

It was tough to play at his flat; he usually got home late from work, and if he played much in the evenings, his neighbours bashed against the wall with what he could have sworn were police truncheons (surely not, unless they'd pickpocketed the cops who'd last arrested them) and shouted obscenities until he stopped. So the evening at the dole house would really be a bit of a relief for him.

He shivered in his thin T-shirt, perhaps a mistake in the chilly weather, but it got hot and crowded in the gig room very quickly, and he'd have regretted wearing anything more. Nothing for it but to walk faster – he had plenty of practice with that.

Pushing open the door to the old building, he felt the heat of bodies pressed close against one another, wave of stuffiness almost a physical assault, and grinned. This was more like it. This was _living_.

He checked out the stage area – some guy in a loose shirt, designer label, bloody _casual_, football supporter with no guts, but hey, the guy's guitar was all right (Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter") and he wasn't here to fight. Instead, he lounged back against a wall close to the microphones, waiting his chance and leaning over to the bar for a cheap Ballantine's Finest.

Drink in hand, he looked around the room. Not much to see, that was for sure; dark with a haze of smoke (but cigarettes, at least, thank God; the other stuff had started to grate on his nerves). Usual collection of ragtag people, battered guitars of all shapes, snatches of noisy conversation, misplayed notes, and someone chucked a handful of peanuts in the direction of the player ("Not your turn, shut up or get onstage!").

Yeah, _this_ was life, all right. Sod the day-to-day, this was where he belonged.

Someone nudged his shoulder. "Going up?"

"Just got here," he said automatically, before remembering he didn't know anyone here tonight and wondering why he was being talked to. He made it down to the abandoned house at least a couple of times a week, but never really found it in him to make friends; instead, he played and drank alone, just wallowing for a few hours before he made his way back to his useless broom closet of a flat.

"'s all right, no one's up," said the floppy-haired kid beside him. _Student_, Greg scoffed to himself, plenty of money from Mum and Dad, didn't really fit in here at all. Still, he was right; there was no one at the microphone anymore, and his fingers itched to play.

He shrugged, pulled out his old guitar, and claimed the stool.

As usual, he didn't know what he was going to play until his fingers touched the strings, but when he hit his first chord, it came to him fully-formed. _Good one_, he thought; he hadn't played The Who here in a while.

Opening notes. Lyrics.

"I know you deceived me, now here's a surprise

I know that you have 'cause there's magic in my eyes…"

He felt his body relax into the music, leaned back – "I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles…" – and looking up was a mistake, because as soon as he did, his gaze caught and was hooked on strangely familiar green eyes, messy brown hair, square jaw.

Where had he seen that before?

"If you think that I don't know about the little tricks you've played…"

Oh, _oh_. That afternoon, out on the beat – _that_ guy, white vest and cigarette, only now there was a leather jacket covering the vest and the cigarette, half-smoked, was tucked behind his ear. How had Greg missed seeing him right away? And what was he doing _here_? Greg was no stranger to the old house or its crowd of regulars, and he had never seen him here before.

But _damn_, he didn't half appreciate the sight of him now.

A half-smile flickered across his face as he thought, _All right, then, here's what I've got_, and tensed his fingers on the frets, picking up the pace a little and driving the rhythm home.

"Well, here's a poke at you

You're gonna choke on it too…"

Someone fetched him a drink while he played, slid it across the floor to come to rest against the leg of the tall stool on which he sat. He glanced down at it – smooth, amber, whoever it was had obviously checked what he was drinking – and when he looked up again, the scruffy man he'd been (_checking out, admit it, Greg_) watching was gone.

The last few words of the song trailed off, "I can see for miles and miles…" and he let them, following their fade with his accompaniment, then swung his guitar away with one hand, claimed his drink with the other, and headed back to the far wall of the room.

As he left the stage area, though, sturdy fingers closed around his wrist and – _took his guitar_ – what the bloody hell –

"Cheers," so softly he almost missed hearing it, and the man from his beat in Southwark that afternoon, the one he'd never expected to see here, was leaning against the stool and holding _his_ guitar and somehow, Greg was holding in one hand the stub of a cigarette he hadn't smoked.

The guy was looking at him, full-on eye contact like they were the only people in the room, and running a hand along the neck of Greg's guitar. His mouth went suddenly dry.

_All right_, Greg said wordlessly to him, _bring it on_. He was expecting a challenge, something flashy, the Stones, maybe, or Steppenwolf – but when fingers touched down on strings, he got something very different. The Who again. _Nice touch._

And the guy never broke eye contact, not once, as he began to sing – and Greg _knew_ he was staring, _knew_ he looked a complete idiot, but he couldn't look away either.

"No one knows what it's like

To be the bad man

To be the sad man

Behind blue eyes…"

Except, of course, his eyes were green, a fact of which Greg was currently uncomfortably aware. He was brilliant though, his guitar was magic, and when the music sped up, so did Greg's pulse.

"When my fist clenches, crack it open

Before I use it and lose my cool…"

_Shouldn't be so intrigued by that idea._

_For Chrissakes, Greg, sort your head out._

He was barely aware of the chords fading, song ending, the singer sliding off the stool (still not breaking his steady gaze), press of fingers against his unresisting hand. By the time he was fully cognizant of what was going on around him again, the door was swinging shut behind the man.

Who still had his guitar.

"Bloody _hell_," and he was after him, pushing his way through the crowd and out of the still-slightly-ajar door – where'd he gone – his goddamn _guitar_ –

Soft notes from behind him and he whirled to see a nonchalant figure leaning against the side of the dole house, right next to the door, absent-mindedly strumming Greg's guitar.

"That's – "

"Yours, yeah." When he wasn't singing, his voice was low, rough with cigarette smoke, and curled warmly around Greg.

"What d'you mean by walking off with _my_ guitar, then?" He was trying hard to keep 'anger' foremost in his mind, but it kept being butted out of the way by 'fascination,' which was making it rather difficult to feel as pissed-off as he probably should.

"Haven't gone anywhere, have I?"

"That's not actually the point."

The man took his right hand off the strings of the guitar and extended it to Greg. "Ripper."

Greg shook. "What sort of a name is that?"

"Mine."

Oh. All right. "Greg."

"Well, that's boring."

"Sorry, would you prefer 'Killer' or something?"

"Greg's fine."

"Oh, thanks."

Ripper (really?) slid a packet of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and offered one to Greg, who took it even though he wasn't particularly keen on smoking at the moment. They struck up together, on the lighter he'd seen earlier that day, and went for a while without speaking, smoke curling up in alternating puffs between them.

"So can I have my guitar back?" he asked finally.

"Gonna play some more?"

"Maybe. Again, not actually the point."

Instead of answering, Ripper moved the cigarette to the corner of his mouth, plucked one string on the guitar and then another, then dropped easily into a cascade of notes. Greg recognized it right away – Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

_Interesting choice._

He didn't sing, just riffed over the first few bars, again and again, until finally, Greg couldn't take it anymore and cut in.

"There might've been things I missed, but don't be unkind

It don't mean I'm blind…"

Ripper glanced up at him. It might have been approval. In any case, he played on, and Greg sang, and they finished the song together, lounging against the brick wall of the old building, surrounded by the smoke from their cigarettes.

"D'you wanna get out of here?" he asked, handing back the guitar.

"Sorry?"

Ripper jerked his thumb back at the building, faint strains of music not quite identifiable out here. "Want to go?"

"Go where?"

"Who cares? We'll have a look 'round. Oh, come on, tell me you're not that bloody square."

"I'm not, I just… my guitar…"

"Fine. Live close?"

"A bit."

"Let's go, then."

"I…" That was _really not_ how the 'come back to mine' conversation usually went. For one thing, as it was Greg's flat, it was usually Greg who did the inviting. And it was usually not with a man, apparently named _Ripper_, who had stolen (borrowed) Greg's guitar, called him 'square,' and might not even be…

He could think of a dozen different ways this could end badly.

None of which explained the fact that he was nodding, hoisting the guitar onto his back, starting down the street in the direction of his home, and _checking_, for God's sake, to make sure Ripper was following.

_Full marks for judgment, Greg._

His last performance evaluation, they'd said he'd be a good copper, if he weren't so impulsive. He supposed he rather agreed.

But this guy was cool, and sort of dark in a way that Greg didn't really ever see around here, where it was all kids in over their heads or drug deals gone bad. Not this subtle hint of danger, _maybe, maybe not_, that was so damned intriguing.

From behind him, as he glanced back, he could see a grin in the darkness, flash of white teeth behind dull red glow of ember. What was he _doing_, he didn't even know this guy's real name, he was showing him where he _lived_, he must be insane…

… no, _insane_ was that a hand had grasped his wrist, pulled him aside into a dark alleyway next to a broken streetlamp, and there was a scrape of stubble against his chin and _Christ_, he was being kissed, soft lips and (God) _teeth_, and he was well aware that on a scale from 'questionable judgment' to 'highway to hell,' he was swinging wildly toward the far end.

He might have resisted… if he hadn't been thinking about this _all night_…

"What – " he gasped, but the temporary reprieve for air was only long enough for the one word, and all Greg could think about was how the _hell_ the man could manage to kiss like that without even taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

They separated again, those green eyes locked on his, and –

"Oi! _Oi!_"

Their gazes snapped in unison to the mouth of the alleyway, where several shadowy figures were gathered.

"Oi! Bloody wooftas!"

"Can't do that on _our_ streets!"

"Fuck off back to Soho!"

"On second thoughts, we'll do it _for_ you!" They were suddenly much closer.

Fingers squeezed Greg's shoulder, but there was no time for words to be exchanged before the first punch was thrown. Ripper blocked it almost negligently, throwing up his left arm to deflect the force, then whirled around on the spot and dove right into it with two of them.

Greg stared in shock for a moment, and then there was a bright white flare, sudden stars in the edges of his vision – one of them had landed a blow on his head – _right_ – he hadn't been brought up wrong side of the London tracks for nothing –

He hauled in, fighting the way he'd learnt as a kid, ducking and weaving, hitting when he could and not paying much attention to where his fists connected. There were two of them on him, maybe more, and (he could handle them – yeah, he could) it was more important to gain the upper hand right now than to be careful.

A flying punch, not even well-thrown, landed square in a stomach, and the larger of his two assailants sank to his knees, heaving. The other ran – thank God; his knuckles were cracked and bleeding – and he spun around to drag them off Ripper…

… only to come face-to-face with the man himself, fist drawn back and cocked at his head.

They stared for a moment, then dropped their guards. There wasn't anyone else left.

Greg leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "Bloody… hell…" he panted. "Where'd you learn to… fight like that?"

The other man avoided his gaze, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"Family thing," he said, finally. His tone of voice made it clear that the matter ended there.

They patched up in Greg's grotty bathroom, still breathless from the adrenaline. Ripper gritted his teeth against a fresh cigarette while Greg picked bits of gravel out of a scrape on his forehead.

"Shame," he said, tight-voiced, drawing a finger across Greg's split lower lip. "You were so _pretty_."

"Fuck off."

They were a right pair, though, the two of them – bruised and swollen, bleeding almost unnoticed except to wipe it away roughly with the back of a hand.

"Bet they look worse, though, eh?"

"'Course they do. Did you _see_ that one run?" Greg laughed, and Ripper joined in.

"Nances."

"Piss artists."

Ripper grabbed the collar of his T-shirt – made no difference, it was torn all to hell anyway – and dragged him in for another kiss, despite bruises, despite cuts.

"Ah! That _bloody_ hurts!"

"Oh, piss right off," he said, and didn't stop.

* * *

He wasn't there when Greg woke up, and so Greg stormed about the flat, muttering curses under his breath as he unearthed bits of his uniform from where he'd tossed them the previous evening as he'd been changing to go out. Wasn't in the least surprising, of course – half the time, when he _actually_ picked them up, they didn't stay the night – but he'd rather thought…

… well, anyway.

He didn't expect to see Ripper again, though he took his guitar down to the dole house every evening (got damn good at the chord changes for "Smoke on the Water," too), but what he expected least of all was to encounter the man a week and a half later, called out to deal with an arrest on a minor charge.

Broad grin from Ripper, clad all in black and still – _still_ – with a cigarette, when he saw who it was that had shown up to do the booking.

"'lo, Officer," he said, the picture of respect.

Greg nodded at him, face studiously blank. "What's this, then?" he asked the shopkeeper who was hovering behind them, nervously fluttering his hands.

"Caught 'im nickin' cigarettes – straight off the counter! Right cheek, I tell ya."

"What was he nic – stealing? How much? Can you show me?"

He got all of the relevant details from the shopman, then came back to where Ripper was sitting, watched over by a couple of wary (and rather formidable-looking) customers who'd offered their assistance. He held out his hand.

"Need your ID."

"Sod off."

"Your ID."

"Haven't got one."

"That's a shame," said Greg, kneeling next to the chair and lowering his voice, "because if you had, I could slap a fine on you and send you on your way. As you don't, I'll have to bring you in, and that's a hell of a lot more paperwork for everyone."

Ripper gave him a look that was both snarl and resignation, then shifted in the chair. One of the customers keeping an eye on him loomed closer.

"I've got to get it out, haven't I?" And he fished it out of a jeans pocket and handed it up.

Greg flipped it over and read it aloud. "Rupert Giles. Somebody's got a toff name, eh? Posh family?"

Ripper's – _Rupert's_ – glare was daggers.

Greg wrote out a fine, lowest possible amount, though he doubted the city would ever see it paid. "Right, there you are, _Rupert_," he said, not entirely able to keep the grin out of his voice. "Now piss off and don't let me see your face again."

* * *

Of course, he was at Greg's flat that evening, practically spitting.

"Who d'you think you are? '_Need your ID_,' like I was some stranger you caught pickpocketing."

Lying back on the couch, stuffing emerging from a tear near his head, Greg said, "I've known you for about three hours, all told, and you _were_ caught lifting."

"Well, yeah, but they were bloody _good_ hours, weren't they?"

"You're astonishingly good at missing the point, _Rupert_."

"You can stick it up your – "

Greg couldn't be bothered with the end of Ripper's sentence and cut it off instead, the only way he knew was guaranteed to work.

And when they separated, he whispered "_Rupert_" again, just for the hell of it, and earned himself a cuff to the back of the head for his troubles.

* * *

Greg started to wonder if he were in a relationship. Several nights a week (he never knew which nights it would be), he came home to an already-occupied house. He'd never asked how Ripper had found the spare key; it suited him just fine not to know.

As an upshot, he wasn't bringing anyone else home anymore. Bit hard to go out cruising when you never knew what was waiting for you back at the flat – and the thought of Ripper's having a go-'round with the sort of guy Greg normally brought home was a bit… unsettling.

Their names changed. Greg started using 'Rupert,' only to decide that the resulting bruises weren't worth it, and switched to Giles instead. His friend pickpocketed him for his wallet in return, read his warrant card, and burst out laughing.

"Lestrade? Really? _Lestrade_, and you were having a go at me for mine?"

"_Rupert._"

"_Lestrade._"

'Giles' and 'Lestrade' became commonplace. Lestrade thought it sounded a bit like a band. Giles thought it sounded ridiculous and said so, striking up a light on the couch, but he wasn't going to stop if _Lestrade_ wasn't.

They found out more about one another. Lestrade confessed to being good at football. Giles revealed a secret love for books. Lestrade told Giles his dream was to own a motorbike. Giles showed him how to hotwire one, before doing the same to a car and vanishing, returning several hours later with fish and chips and beer. Lestrade slapped him with another fine that would never be paid.

"_And_ I was a founding member of Pink Floyd, back in the day."

"You're hardly in your twenties."

"Yeah, I know, not bad, eh?"

"Piss off."

"Good for picking up girls, though. They always believe it."

"Who's picking up _girls_?"

* * *

Giles lay on Lestrade's bed, the usual cigarette caught between his lips, unlit.

"My dad wants me to go back to school."

Lestrade hoisted himself halfway up from his prone position on the floor, just enough to look at his friend. "Back to Oxford? You'd be miles away."

"Not Oxford. Different place… family tradition." Even to Lestrade, his casual attitude sounded forced.

"Where?"

"Not close."

Lestrade let his head and shoulders drop back to the floor. "Going?"

"Why should I? Doing fine here, aren't I?"

"You should go."

"_Why?_"

"Well, you can't… I mean, you're not going to just do _this_ for the rest of your life, are you? Just hang about twocking whatever suits you and getting nicked every so often?"

"Got other plans," was Giles' response. "Some friends of mine and I. Big plans."

Lestrade didn't like the sound of that. "What sort of… plans?"

"Can't say."

"You've got a hell of a lot of secrets, you know?"

Giles shrugged. "Tell you if I could."

"No, you wouldn't."

"Look, mate," and Giles rolled off the bed onto the floor, staring directly at Lestrade. "You're all right."

"I should bloody well hope so."

"But there are some things you're better off not knowing. See? So just… leave it."

_You steal cars and shoplift in front of me – and you _know_ I'm a police officer. What could possibly be so awful that I'm not even allowed to hear about it?_

Pointless to wonder, so he pushed himself up off the floor and splashed water on his face at the kitchen sink.

"Think about going," he said. "There are limits, Ripper." His friend looked up at the nickname. "We have a good time – but there are limits."

Giles frowned. A few minutes later, he got up off the floor as well and grabbed his jacket.

"Places to be," he said.

"Thought you were staying."

"Can't. Busy."

"You weren't busy five minutes ago."

"Yeah, well."

Lestrade didn't bother arguing. He knew he couldn't; knew he'd never been able to where this strange, imperfect approximation of an ordinary man was concerned.

"Do as you like," he said, resigned. "But mind you don't come 'round here if you need a rescue after you do something stupid."

"Oh, I won't."

Neither one of them meant it.

* * *

Greg Lestrade didn't see Rupert Giles again for a long time.

He'd started to notice men in the street – not the same ones he'd noticed before, not the roughed-up boys with motorbikes and softly-spiked hair, people he wanted to emulate in a way. Now he saw dark leather jackets, piercing gazes, cigarettes (and worse) that were basically just a placeholder for sex and violence. This was dangerous, he knew; dangerous and self-destructive, because Giles, for all his posturing and talk, was not like that.

He hoped to _God_ he was right. And while he was hoping, he turned up the collar on his own jacket and beat a hasty retreat, not because he was afraid that the people he was seeing more and more often these days would hurt him, but because he was afraid he would let them.

His doorknob rattled late one night, rattled and rattled and didn't give, and he hadn't been sleeping well lately, so he heard the thump of something heavy hitting the door and scraping along it.

Silence, and he held his breath, but there were no more sounds. Hauling himself out of bed (made no difference; he wasn't sleeping _in_ it, might as well not be sleeping _out_ of it), he threw open the door, and stood stock still for a moment at the sight.

Giles was in the doorway, lying propped up against the side of the frame and white as a sheet. Bruises stood out starkly against his pale skin; blood trickled from somewhere underneath his hairline, unnoticed as it traced his jaw and soaked into the collar of his white T-shirt.

Lestrade shook him. "Giles! Giles… Ripper…"

With effort, his friend raised his head, one eye swollen shut.

"Hey – wake up – c'mon – " He had to get the man inside, get him cleaned up, find out what was going on.

"… Ethan…"

"Come on." Lestrade slung one of Giles' arms around his neck, wrapped one of his own around his friend's waist, and half-carried, half-dragged him into the flat, letting him fall onto the couch and kneeling beside him. He looked like he had a pretty nasty head wound; those could be dangerous, couldn't they? You had to keep people awake, right?

"Giles. Giles. What the hell happened?"

"… Ethan?"

"No, not bloody Ethan. Don't you recognize me? Who's Ethan?"

"… Ethan, Randall…"

He gave up. Sure, he might as well be Ethan. "Randall what?"

"He… Eyghon… he's…" That was as far as Giles got before his head fell back onto the pillow and his eyes closed.

_Shit. Shit. Shit._ This wasn't supposed to happen. _Big plans_, Giles had said. Why hadn't the bastard gone back to school? What had he gotten himself involved in instead?

He heated water in a pot on the stove – the actual running water never made it past 'lukewarm' these days – and used an old shirt as a cloth, wiping the blood off his friend's face to try to get a look at his injuries. There was a pretty nasty gash on his head, and his face was going to be a range of interesting colours in the morning, but he was probably going to be all right. Lestrade reckoned he ought to be checking for a concussion or something, but it was a bit hard to ask Giles stupid questions about what day it was and who'd won the last North London derby when he was passed out cold on the couch.

Stripping the shirt off his unconscious friend, he found more marks, shallow slashes along his back and chest, a – was that a _burn?_ – on his left arm, right above the tattoo.

Lestrade dropped his head into his hands and sat for a moment, then picked up his damp cloth again and sponged away the blood from the new cuts. He couldn't help running his fingers over the marred skin, sick at the difference between the last time he'd done that (grinning, teasing, and Giles' flushed face when he'd pulled back, just for a moment) and _this_ (his friend ashen, unmoving, _wake up, what have you done_)…

He fell asleep in the living room, stretched out on the floor beside the couch because he was still pretty sure you weren't supposed to leave people alone when they'd had head injuries – and if he left, he'd probably wake up in the morning to an empty flat and no idea where his friend was or whether or not he was off getting himself killed again.

He awakened to the first glimpse of grey light through the dingy window, half-dozing for a moment and then snapping to attention as the night's events came back to him. Raising his head to look up at the couch, he saw that he had not been the first to wake up, and Giles was sitting at the far end of the couch, head bowed, face hidden, hands buried in his hair.

As carefully as he could, he moved to sit beside his friend – not touching or even trying to make eye contact, just being present.

"Hey," he ventured.

No response, but then, he hadn't been expecting one.

"Hey, Giles… hey… Ripper – "

but his friend recoiled violently at the nickname he had so matter-of-factly claimed for himself when they had met, jerking away and shaking his head. He muttered softly, "No, not Ripper, that's not my name, I'm not that, I'm not him…"

"Okay. That's fine. Giles, then. Fucking hell, what have they done to you? What's happened?"

For a minute, he thought the broken man on his couch might actually respond, but then he shook his head and said, a strange, vacant look in his eyes, "Nothing you'd understand."

"You called me Ethan. Who's Ethan?"

The alarm that flashed across Giles' face was unmistakeable.

Lestrade dropped an arm gently around his friend's shoulders, and though his muscles tensed, he didn't pull away. "It's all right. You're safe here, just _talk_ to me. How am I supposed to help you if you don't?"

"Can't help me," said Giles. "Not safe. You wouldn't know."

"No, because you won't bloody _tell me_. Look, I don't know what the hell you've gotten yourself into, but it looks like you could use a friend. And judging from the fact that you showed up bleeding all over _my_ doorstep last night, I'm guessing I'm the closest thing you've got."

Giles laughed bitterly. "And you're a copper."

"Never mind that. I'm – " He glanced around him, nervous check despite the fact that he _knew_ they were alone in his flat. "I won't get you into any trouble. I only want to help."

"You _can't_. There were… it was stupid, we thought… and Randall…"

"Randall, you said something about him last night."

"He's dead, Lestrade. I was stupid and my mates were stupid and a man's _died_."

"Christ. What happened?"

He shook his head. "I can't. I can't. Ethan would…"

"Never mind Ethan. He's not here, is he?"

"That doesn't matter. He'd know."

They sat for a while and didn't speak. Lestrade tried to still his breathing; this wasn't something he could get his head around very well, but it was his _friend_ in trouble now, and he had to find a way to help.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Giles, what are you into? How did all this happen?"

"Stupid. Dangerous. Thought it would be… different."

"Don't we always."

"Wasn't supposed to be… no, that's a lie. It was always supposed to be dangerous. That was half the fun. We never thought… we never _thought_."

"Hey." Lestrade tightened his arm around his friend. "Things happen. I know." God, that sounded stupid.

"Not like this." Giles shook him off, stood up, paced a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "Look, I'd better go. Not safe for me to be here."

"Safe as anywhere. Stay, you're in no fit state…"

"No. I'll go… I know somewhere."

"Look what happened the last time you took off and didn't tell me."

"No, I'll… I'll… be in touch, yeah?"

"Jesus, why are you so bloody _stubborn_? You're a wreck, Giles, look at you. All roughed up," and he stepped closer to brush his fingers gently over the nasty swelling underneath one eye. "D'you really think I'm going to just let you disappear again?"

"Go to work, Lestrade. You're going to be late."

He hadn't even _looked_ at the clock. "Oh, hell. I can't – "

Giles stepped away, reached for the front door. "I've got to go. I'll…" but instead of finishing his sentence, his hand closed on the doorknob and he stumbled backward through it, never once breaking eye contact.

Lestrade watched the door fall shut after him, banging once against the frame and coming to rest ajar.

_Could you possibly have fucked that up any worse? You'll never get him back now._

The door swung back open and Giles shouldered his way through it, grabbing Lestrade by both arms and pulling him in for a fierce kiss, teeth dragging across lips, hands gripping so hard they left marks.

Final press of fingers, and he was gone, and this time there was nothing more.

_Was that a promise_, Lestrade wondered helplessly, _or an ending?_

* * *

He floated for a while, anchorless. Went to work in the mornings, branched out into evening shifts, nights, didn't matter. When he was off, he went down to the dole house and played ("Behind Blue Eyes," but he could never do it the way Giles had, and he switched to The Creation and the Stones instead).

He wondered about his friend and kept wondering until he looked up the name 'Giles' in the files down at the station. List of minor offences a mile long (generous stack of papers in the folder) under 'Rupert,' but nothing recent – the last booking was in his name, his signature scrawled at the bottom of the page. There was an address, but he didn't bother. His friend wouldn't be there.

At two o'clock in the morning one night, after too many drinks and an angry rendition of "Makin' Time" that snapped a B string, he pulled the address out of the file anyway and drove by in a panda car. He had the sense to leave it parked around the corner when he banged on the door, so the stern-faced man who answered never knew who he was or where he'd come from. And he'd been right. His friend wasn't there.

He got a letter one afternoon. A bloody _letter_, the man couldn't even be bothered to ring him up and let him hear his voice. _At school_, it said, _safe here._ And other things. _Too far away to come to London. Courses take up all of my time._

_The library is massive. Beautiful._

_I don't have my guitar._

Every sentence took him farther away from Lestrade.

He wrote back, although there was no return address, sending the letter instead to the address on the police reports. Not much to say, but he thought of things. _Got a promotion – sergeant now. Bought a record player to celebrate. You never told me who Ethan was._

Probably, the last sentence was a mistake. He didn't care. He was tired of never knowing anything that mattered.

* * *

Months went by; his life fell into a sort of a routine again, more working hours, less free time he didn't really need. The guitar and the record player stayed clean, polished, well-used; everything else he owned fell into shabby disrepair. _Pretty fair metaphor_, he thought, and shrugged it off.

He answered the knock at his door without enthusiasm, pushing a stack of clean-enough-to-wear-again clothes out of the way. He hadn't been playing his music too loudly, and anyway, they could just piss right off.

In the doorway stood a man Lestrade might have said resembled Giles, if Giles were ever to consider combing his hair or putting on a shirt with a collar.

"School break," his old friend offered, uncertainty warring on his face with his characteristic smirk.

Instead of waiting to see which expression won, Lestrade hauled back and punched him in the jaw, feeling his knuckles crack satisfactorily at the impact. Giles staggered back several steps, and when he came to rest again, Lestrade grasped the front of his shirt and dragged him back upright for other reasons, there being absolutely no reasonable balance to the way he felt about the man in front of him.

"Bloody hell," Giles muttered a few moments later, rubbing the side of his face. "Did you have to hit so hard?"

Lestrade flipped him a two-fingered salute. "You're lucky that's all I did."

_I missed you._

"Lucky you can't fight worth a damn, you mean."

_I missed you, too._

* * *

Shirt untucked, unbuttoned, Giles lay on Lestrade's bed in the same position he had so many months ago when they'd first talked about where his life might be heading. No cigarette this time, though. No cigarettes at all since he'd been back. He must've quit.

The Rolling Stones were on the record player, "Sympathy for the Devil," and neither man had spoken for some time.

"D'you believe in all that?"

"Believe in what?" Lestrade asked from where he was sitting at the foot of the bed.

"Souls," said Giles, with a wave of his hand toward the turntable. "Fate, destiny, the Devil, all of it."

They didn't talk about that sort of thing. Or at least, they never had. Maybe now they did.

He shrugged. "Never thought about it. Do you?"

Giles made a noncommittal face. "No evidence one way or another, I suppose," he said, and lapsed back into silence.

* * *

'School breaks' became the usual, months without a word from Giles and then the summer and an unplanned knock on Lestrade's door. Lestrade always let him in, and they played music, and they talked.

Lestrade talked about work – when they put the 'D' in front of his rank, Giles was the first to know, which was a bit sorry, really, when he thought about it, because Giles didn't hear about it until three months after it happened. Still, he couldn't think of anyone else he'd tell, and when he told his friend, they went out for a pint, which turned into whisky and music and they ended up at the dole house just like they'd used to do. It almost made it all right that they hadn't done it in longer than Lestrade could remember, and that the dole house was a place he went alone these days.

The next year, they moved him to the murder squad. He saved that up even longer, because it happened in the winter, and when he finally said something, Giles thought he was taking the piss. It took a badge, a warrant card and a lot of idle threats to convince him otherwise, and then Giles spent the evening calling him Sam Spade and attempting to fake a frankly awful American drawl.

Lestrade _had_ to tell him about work, because his friend, now grown quieter than ever, didn't talk about school. He'd asked once what Giles was studying there, and the answer he got was worse than vague – oh, some history, some… science…

He didn't bother asking again.

One evening, early spring, a knock on his door and he answered. Giles was there, shifting from one foot to the other like he'd always done when he was nervous – but it wasn't summer yet and Giles ought to have been at school, wherever that was, far enough from London that he never rang or wrote, anyway – only instead he was standing in the doorway to Lestrade's flat, hopeful half-grin on his face and a kit bag in each hand, and he was wearing –

"Is that _tweed_?"

Giles just looked at him as he shook his head in helpless laughter, almost sad; where was his friend, with the torn jeans and leather jacket, messy hair and cigarette and supreme unconcern? How was he standing here now, wrapped in some professorial disguise that made it seem like those shared years had never happened?

"Are you wearing bloody _tweed_?"

Brilliant green gaze skimmed up and down Lestrade's body until he took the hint and glanced down at himself. Black suit (cheap, off the rack at Marks & Sparks), white collared shirt, combed hair…

… him too, then. Dressed for work, hadn't been bothered to change, but Giles was right; his jeans were on the floor in the closet, crumpled and forgotten.

"Ever get that motorbike, then?" The look on Giles' face made it plain he knew the answer.

"Nah."

"So bugger off about the clothes, then, eh? _And_ they're for work."

Well, so were his. They'd grown up. Simple as that. Of all the things Lestrade had come to expect from his crazy friend, driving stolen cars wrong way down one-way streets, eating fish and chips of dubious provenance, waking him up at three o'clock in the morning drunk and sitting on the floor shouting The Only Ones (with perfect guitar accompaniment, of course, even three sheets to the wind), sleepy stripping of clothes, fingers exploring, before one of them sobered up and realized that, technically, they ought to be arrested, or _doing_ the arresting –

Well. Tweed and suits, then. What the hell had they become?

"What work?"

"Museum of London, in the City. Fairly new one, getting bigger. They need another curator."

"You, a _museum curator_."

"Piss off, I read history at Oxford."

"And dropped out."

"And went back."

"Hey," Lestrade said, realizing. "Does this mean you're living in London again?"

"For a bit, yes. Stay at yours?"

"Who are you kidding? You've already brought your bags."

This new routine was better than the old one. They'd get up in the mornings, drink coffee, skip breakfast, go to work. Evenings, sometimes they'd talk or play (two guitars now, leaning side-by-side against the wall), or Lestrade would complain about working conditions, or Giles would share some obscure bit of knowledge he'd just discovered in the museum archives. He brought a weirdly twisted knife home one day – "Found this in the collections room" – and told Lestrade it had once been a murder weapon.

"When?"

"About two thousand years ago, in a very small druidic sect."

"Good, so whoever did it's long dead, then."

"Er," said Giles, "right. Of course."

"Last thing I need is more cases. Don't know why they keep giving the new ones to _my_ team. I didn't think you were allowed to bring artefacts home."

"I'm not. Didn't want to leave this one at the museum, though. It might be… dangerous."

"What are you talking about? An antique knife?"

Giles cleared his throat. "Yes, well… just a whim, really, I suppose."

Another time, he came home with a sealed box. He never explained it, nor did he open it, but it sat by the door all night and Lestrade could have sworn, hearing a noise that brought him less than half-awake in the thick darkness, that there was light around the edges of its seal.

The third time, it was an armoured gauntlet, heavy, articulated, and with spikes along the knuckles.

"Bloody hell," said Lestrade, taken aback. "Planning on getting into a fight?"

"You never know," said Giles, and dropped it on the table.

"Listen, er… I've got to ask. What do you keep bringing all this home for? You… _do_ take it back, right?"

Giles bit his lip. "Of course I do."

"Well, it's only that – I mean – there are _rules_, you know, and if you're using my flat for – "

"You never used to mind," Giles pointed out.

"Yeah, I did. But you're… sort of a force of nature, you know? Impossible to say no. And we were younger then."

"Right. Back then it was all, 'down with the establishment.' Now we _are_ the establishment."

Lestrade groaned. "Don't remind me. The establishment involves a hell of a lot of paperwork."

* * *

For once, Lestrade was the one with news. He came home full of righteous indignation, ready to tell Giles about the mad thing that had happened to him at work that day – a case, a body on the street, and some bloody _wanker_ of a kid, barging in like he owned the place, telling them what had happened as though he had some sort of expertise, good God, he needed a drink…

He never did get 'round to telling him, though, because Giles was standing in the living room with his kit bags, fully packed, one in each hand.

"What are you doing?"

He hefted the bags lamely in Lestrade's direction. "It would appear I'm leaving."

"'It would appear?' D'you want to tell me what's going on? Have… _I_ done something?" He didn't think he had – it was Giles whose behaviour was increasingly odd these days, not him – but it seemed the thing to ask.

"I've got to go to America for… work."

"For work? You're a bloody _museum curator_. Who has to go to America to be a museum curator?"

Giles shrugged helplessly. "I might be out of touch for… a while…"

"You can't be serious."

"I'm wearing tweed. It's impossible to joke in tweed."

"Where are you going? America's a big place."

"There's nothing you can do about it," he said, but gently, almost an apology.

"I'm not going to try."

"California, a place called Sunnydale." Giles made a face. "Probably hot and full of underdressed hedonists."

"Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem for you in all that _tweed_."

The look Giles gave him then was worthy of a school librarian who'd just caught two kids snogging in the historical reference section. _Loudly._

"Coming with me to the airport?"

Lestrade supposed it was either that or watch his best friend walk out of his life without even a proper goodbye.

"'Course I am. Call us a cab. You'll never _believe_ what happened at work today…"

* * *

Not long afterward, Lestrade moved out of his dingy bedsit in Peckham. A detective sergeant made a reasonable salary; he could afford to go, and there was no reason to stay anymore now that no one was going to come looking for him in the summers. He ended up in a nice, if sparse, furnished flat up Kilburn way, just edging into Westminster. It meant an annoying Tube changeover, but it was better than the old place, and if he were being completely honest with himself, it let him move on a little.

Lestrade could probably be forgiven for having assumed that was the end of his sharing a flat, given that he hadn't even told his colleagues he was moving. And it was, for a little while – until, one evening, the door fell open (what? he'd locked it, he _knew_ he had, he'd lived in Peckham for years and old habits die hard) and that bloody kid was standing there.

The young man had taken to showing up at Lestrade's crime scenes. He'd usually take one look at it all and then start spouting off what he called "deductions," telling them exactly what had taken place and how it had all come together and what they ought to be looking for and (usually) exactly where Anderson could stick his quite legitimate protests. Lestrade would have had him taken away, would have banned him from investigation sites, would have blocked the kid's mobile number (he'd taken, for some reason, to texting Lestrade – _you're wrong_ this, _you need me_ that), except that he was always _right_, goddamn him. Nothing he said was ever wrong.

But showing up at Lestrade's flat – no, not just showing up, but _breaking in_, though Lestrade couldn't fathom how he'd done it – that was just a bit beyond the pale. He stood up angrily to say something, hadn't yet decided quite what it would be, but stopped short when he realized the kid was just standing there, shaking, eyes bloodshot and glazed over, pupils blown wide.

"Are you – "

Yeah, he was high, all right.

"Been thinking about that murder-suicide," the kid (no, _Sherlock_, his name was Sherlock, unbelievable as that might be) said, rapid-fire.

"I'm sure you have," Lestrade agreed. "Come inside. Sit down." He took Sherlock's elbow, trying to guide him to the couch.

"Murder-suicide…" Sherlock said, but then his gaze snapped into focus and he met Lestrade's eyes, making fierce, almost physical eye contact. "_No_. Not a murder-suicide, a double murder."

"Right," said Lestrade. "Look, sit down, all right?" Sherlock's grip on his arm was tight enough that it would probably leave marks, and it was making his skin go numb. He half-steered, half-manhandled the younger man over to the couch and leaned forward until Sherlock was forced to sit. It lasted about five seconds before Sherlock was up again, pacing back and forth through Lestrade's living room and talking even faster than he usually did.

"Brother – jealous – didn't want to watch her move away, didn't trust the fiancé, paranoid schizophrenic, wanted his – decreased mental capacity, lack of affect – keep her close by, knew he couldn't, had to keep her somehow – gun from a friend, dealer, self-medicated for the hallucinations, easiest thing in the world to break in, she wanted to help him – and – " He stopped suddenly. "Do you understand?"

Lestrade took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, although it would take the better part of a night's puzzling to assemble the disjointed phrases and match them to the evidence they'd already collected.

The kid (_Sherlock_) shook harder, and Lestrade placed both hands on his shoulders. "Lie down," he said, suiting his actions to the words. "Sleep it off. You're not going anywhere tonight."

"Not planning to," Sherlock replied. "But I'm not him."

"You're – what?"

"You miss him," said Sherlock. "But I'm not him."

"No," said Lestrade. The kid was high, had no idea what he was saying, wouldn't remember in the morning. This one time, he could let it slide. "You're nothing like him."

He went into his bedroom, shut the door, and fingered the strings of his guitar instead of sleep until the morning.

* * *

The second time Sherlock Holmes showed up high at Greg Lestrade's front door, Lestrade just pulled him inside and left him on the couch with a blanket to come down.

The third time, it was worse, and Lestrade took a day off work to sit with the kid and help him get through the inevitable crash. He wanted more drugs, all but demanded Lestrade let him go so he could shoot up again – Lestrade hadn't known he was injecting, and a quick strip of his shirt revealed track marks up both arms; whatever else he was, Sherlock was no stranger to cocaine.

The fourth time, Lestrade had just come off a sixteen-hour shift. He was tired as hell, and when Sherlock rang his doorbell, muttering at unintelligible speeds about the killer's classical piano training, Lestrade threw him furiously into the bedroom ("What the _hell_ are you thinking? I don't have time to sort you out, I've got a _murder_ on!"), slammed the door on him, and fell back onto the couch, head in his hands. What was it with this Sherlock kid, and why was _he_ the one who had to bear the brunt of it?

A knock on his door startled him (that was unique; Sherlock never knocked) and he looked up sharply. _Giles_ – but it couldn't be Giles, Giles was in America, and how in God's name would he explain to Giles the skinny young idiot in the bedroom?

It wasn't Giles, of course. Lestrade hadn't so much as heard from his friend in months. The man standing outside Lestrade's flat was tall, with sleek dark hair combed into submission and a grim look on his face.

"Can I help you?" and it was by no means an enthusiastic offer.

"No, actually," the man said, "but you _can_ help my brother."

"Your what?"

"My brother. I believe he is here right now?" The man raised an eyebrow and peered around Lestrade into the darkened flat.

"Sherlock Holmes is your brother?"

"Mmm, yes. He seems to have taken rather a liking to you."

A 'liking.' Was that what it was called when someone broke into your flat repeatedly to sleep off drug highs and scornfully dissect your life?

"Can't see how that's any business of yours."

"What is your interest in my brother, Sergeant?"

"My _inter_ – I haven't got one! _He_ keeps coming over here!"

"And you let him."

"Well, of course I let him. He keeps showing up drugged to the gills!"

"Indeed. _That_ is where I was hoping you would assist."

"'Assist' how?"

"It is a _most_ unhealthy habit. God knows I've tried to convince Sherlock to stop many times. But you know how he is – always more stubborn than is good for him."

No, Lestrade _didn't_ 'know how he was,' but that didn't seem relevant.

"Get Sherlock off the cocaine, Inspector," the man outside his door said, "and I assure you it will be worth your while. Despite his… attitude, he is an extremely useful ally."

He turned and walked away, leaving Lestrade to stare after him until black suit and black umbrella were swallowed by the shadows.

When Sherlock came out of Lestrade's bedroom the next morning, he was startled to find Lestrade sitting on the couch pointing him straight back where he'd come from.

"Back in."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Back in there. I'm tired of your coming 'round in the middle of the night completely bloody chalked and having me deal with it. Your _brother_ visited last night, you know. How did he even know you were here?"

"_Mycroft_." Sherlock sounded murderous.

"Yeah. So you can just stay where you are until you're shot of it. All of it. The drugs, everything."

"And how exactly do you plan to keep me here?"

"I don't. But if you don't cooperate, you can stop showing up at crime scenes, too. I won't be brought up for letting a civilian _and_ an addict getting involved in police cases."

"You need me."

"I can _use your help_. There's a difference."

"Yes, and I'm right and you're wrong."

"Then prove it to me. _Clean._"

Sherlock glowered at him from the entrance to his room, then muttered, "I'm not an addict, you know."

"Okay," Lestrade shrugged. "Then this should be easy."

_Famous last words_, he thought bitterly to himself a few days later.

He was starting to wish Sherlock had been addicted (no, not addicted, of _course_ not) to some other drug, something that would leave him shaking and ill, just so that he would be a bit… incapacitated. As it was, he didn't know how much cocaine Sherlock had been on when he'd decided to put a stop to it (enough, he thought; he'd seen the state Sherlock was in, he could have _died_), but it was certainly enough for the withdrawal to send him alternating between fits of rage and depression. Lestrade was never sure whether he was going to come home to a destroyed living room, his few possessions flung about in anger, or to Sherlock, despondent on the floor.

It wasn't pleasant, the not knowing, but it was oddly familiar.

On the eleventh day, he came home to Sherlock's long form draped all across his couch, arms folded behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles with his feet hanging off the far end. There was a cigarette in his mouth, and Lestrade stopped in the doorway as the image found old, long-disused patterns in his brain and imprinted itself upon them. He half-expected Sherlock to sit up, grab his guitar (locked into the bedroom for safekeeping, of course, away from violent outbursts) and start playing Genesis.

"All right, Sherlock?" he asked, much as he might have done to Giles. It was a far cry from their usual greetings – "Getting anywhere yet?" and a glower in response – but something about seeing Sherlock there like that made it difficult to apply their accustomed degree of distance and sarcasm.

Sherlock sat up and fixed his gaze on Lestrade. "It's been eleven days," he said. "You're worried I might not be over my addiction. I've told you before, there was no addiction."

Right. Sure. "Then why did you keep doing it?"

"I was _bored_."

"Most people play Scrabble."

"_Most_ people are idiots."

"Fine, then. If you're so bored, then how is lying 'round my flat all day helping?"

"It isn't. You haven't given me a choice."

"I have. You can leave anytime you like."

There was a brief pause. "But without your cases."

"You get the cases when I'm satisfied you're clean."

"Are you satisfied yet?"

"Since when do you smoke?"

Sherlock blinked at the apparent non sequitur. "Since I found your cigarettes."

"You're only trading one addiction for another."

"Says the man whose pack I'm currently smoking."

"I quit ages ago. They're not mine. They were… left here."

His hesitation gave him away, but with Sherlock it hardly mattered; Lestrade had never seen him miss a trick regardless of how little evidence there was.

"No, they weren't. You haven't lived here long; you went in a different direction on the night I met you. And you've never had anyone over here but me. Your colleagues don't even know where you live." He looked Lestrade up and down quickly. "You're not lying, though, you don't smoke anymore. Never smoked much. So these aren't yours and you didn't find them here, which means you brought them with you, even though you don't plan to make use of them. Why did you bring them?"

He opened his mouth to answer, realized he didn't really have anything to say.

"Cigarettes aren't sentimental unless they're all you have. Someone who left suddenly, then – but not in anger, it's someone you care about enough to keep something like this. Maybe you're hoping he'll come back, maybe – " Sherlock broke off. "Oh, of course, it's _him_."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course I do, I always do. Who was he to you? A friend, a lover?"

For some reason, he almost gave Sherlock an answer (as much as he could, which would have been, _I don't know, any of that, all of it at once_), but he managed to regain his senses in time to say, instead, "None of your business."

Stupid, though, not to expect Sherlock to figure it out anyway. "You don't know, do you? What he was or why he left?"

"We didn't talk about everything. Sometimes, Sherlock, there are things that _don't need to be said_."

The younger man was not particularly good at taking hints.

"How long has it been?"

"Sherlock, I don't want to talk about this."

"A year, maybe? A little more? You haven't heard from him."

"Sherlock, what part of 'not talking about this' am I not making clear enough?"

A hard look, but at least Sherlock subsided.

"You can let me go now," he said a little later.

"I'm not keeping you."

"And if I want the cases?"

He looked meaningfully at Sherlock's arms, the needle scars plainly laid out along the pale skin his short-sleeved shirt didn't cover. "If you want the cases, you'll be clean and sober when I call you."

"Can I smoke?"

In answer, Lestrade stepped into his bedroom, pulled the half-empty box of nicotine patches from the bedside table drawer, and threw it through the doorway in Sherlock's general direction.

"… bloody _puritanical_…" he thought he heard from the living room and smirked. Sherlock might have one over on him in just about every respect, but he was still in charge of his own crime scenes, and he wasn't about to let that change anytime soon.

* * *

Sherlock came to crime scenes and made deductions. He showed up calm and even-tempered, if perhaps a little too gleeful at times, and, with a sharp glance at Sherlock's arms beneath his long-sleeved shirts, Lestrade let him. Eventually, they became a sort of double act, Lestrade's new team not really understanding who this extra person was, but knowing that if their DI was stumped for any length of time by a case that they were on, this Sherlock Holmes guy would show up and do his thing, dismissing all their carefully-collected evidence and tossing out incredible and yet somehow believable answers.

Well, mostly believable. Sometimes Sherlock said something and Lestrade would just stare at him, a sceptical expression on his face, until Sherlock shrugged and took him through the whole thing, start to finish.

"That's impossible," Lestrade told him.

"No," Sherlock replied, "it's just improbable. I've already eliminated anything impossible."

"_You're_ impossible."

Sherlock continued to show up at Lestrade's flat, always without warning or permission. He'd walk in as Lestrade was watching television, giving away the endings of the films with just a few quick glimpses of the screen. He had a harder time with football matches; Lestrade could predict the outcomes with far more accuracy than Sherlock, but then again, he didn't know about the sweeper's drinking problem, or the striker's estranged family in Wales. Sometimes Sherlock didn't appear at all, and Lestrade went to bed in relative peace, only to wake up the next morning to find the young detective folded into a disorganized heap on the couch, asleep.

It was strange to think about, sometimes, the way his life had fallen together. The way he seemed to end up in routines that made no sense – in awful little holes in Peckham, where an intriguing, fascinating man would break in several times a week and sit there on his old, worn couch and wait for him and kiss him, wrestle with him, make music with him – in the same flat, but older, slightly cleaner, where he'd come home every day from work exhausted, and the man would be there still, not breaking in this time because he lived there now, but all the rest of it the same – in Kilburn, barely moved in, not a moment to enjoy his solitude before this other kid, high first on drugs and now on doing Lestrade's job for him, began to break in as well.

Really, Lestrade supposed, the problem was his locks. None of them ever seemed to keep anyone out.

He was sitting on the couch, for once not occupied by Sherlock, when the generic ringtone of his mobile broke into his thoughts. He sighed and picked it up – he was off-duty, yeah, but 'off-duty' was really just a nonsense phrase where he and Scotland Yard were concerned.

"Lestrade."

"Er – hello."

The gentle voice on the other end of the line was one of those routines Lestrade couldn't ever quite forget, despite the scratchiness of the long-distance call. "Hullo, Giles."

They talked. There wasn't really much else they could do, and Lestrade didn't say a word about the two years that had passed without a moment's contact. It was pointless where Giles was concerned, and there was no way he'd be able to maintain his quite-appropriate frustration; he always gave in sooner, rather than later, with his friend. In the end, neither one of them said much, but it was in the pauses and the hesitations that the real conversation happened.

"How've you been?" _You do know you belong here, right?_

"Oh, fine. Busy. The job's… a bit more than I'd been expecting." _But I don't regret it._

"I can definitely sympathize with that." _Neither do I. We are both clearly mad._

There was tension in Giles' voice, though, and it took most of a normal conversation for him to address it, somewhere at the point where Lestrade was saying something trivial and Giles interrupted.

"It's been all right for you, then."

"'All right' is one way of putting it, I suppose."

"I had to go, you know."

"Yeah, of course. Museums to be curated and all."

"Er – actually, libraries." There was a pause. "No, I was needed. I was – well – you don't know what it's like to be responsible for someone, really responsible, their whole life in your hands. I didn't want that, but I ended up with it anyway. You wouldn't – "

Lestrade thought of Sherlock, coming in at night and sitting on the couch, quietly rolling up his sleeves so that even though Lestrade hadn't asked, he could see that the track marks were healing and there weren't any new ones. He thought of crime scenes, blood spattered on walls, promises of repetition and the desperation of being willing to do _anything_, anything at all to stop its happening again.

"Yeah," he cut off his friend. "Yeah, I do know."

Silence for a long time on the line; they both had too much to say and not enough, their lives long since diverged, but neither of them wanting to surrender contact.

Finally, they stopped trying to find the words.

"I've got to go. Classes are about to end; the library'll be… there'll be students."

"Right, of course, sorry."

"I'll call you again."

_In two more years?_ "Okay. It's getting late anyway."

"Good night."

"Night."

It was strange, Lestrade thought, the way one phone call could lift off so much of the tension and yet leave so much new tension in its place. Although it seemed like the answer should be obvious, he didn't really know whether or not he was happy Giles had called.

His front door lock rattled in a familiar way, and Lestrade gave himself a mental shake as the door opened. He'd have to put Giles aside for now; no way his brain could cope with that and Sherlock both at once.

* * *

To be entirely fair to Giles, he didn't wait two years to ring again. This time, it was only one.

"Hello."

"Giles. Hi." It had been a particularly stressful day, he hated it when his cases involved children, and he wasn't sure whether or not he could handle talking to his – friend? lover? stranger? – right now.

He never was sure, though.

"Why the call?"

"I, er. I'm not sure, really. Some, ah, things have changed in Sunnydale. I'm – " Giles' voice suddenly brightened " – looking at a career change!"

"So… not a librarian anymore?"

"No, I suppose not. They've… closed the library."

He'd never heard Giles so hesitant to speak, so careful about every word. What the hell was going on?

"So why don't you come back here then?"

That was the longest pause of all.

"I still have some – responsibilities here in Sunnydale. I'm afraid I can't leave just yet."

"Responsibilities. Right." _To your closed-down library. To your_ – but then he remembered the other things Giles had said during their last conversation.

_Responsible for someone. Their life in your hands._

Just like he was.

"So," he said, and if it sounded a little forced, at least the words came out more naturally as he continued. "What've you been up to, then?"

It was in the middle of a half-hearted argument about the Moody Blues, Giles singing lines from "Nights in White Satin" to make a point about which neither of them was entirely clear and Lestrade laughing at him, that Sherlock walked in. He shot Lestrade a curious look, but wandered through to the bedroom instead of staying out in the living room where the older man was on the phone.

Last time they'd spoken, it had gotten harder and harder to keep the conversation going and they'd given up, weak excuses for uncertainties they couldn't voice. This time, they clung to one another's words and didn't want to hang up at all. For Lestrade, it was escape – this was so far removed from his everyday, bringing back memories of times when a workday was a good, solid eight hours, times when his desk at work wasn't covered with pictures of small, helpless bodies…

He didn't know what Giles was escaping, but he was damned sure that was what his friend was doing.

"Greg."

It was not Giles' voice, but the name – no one used it now, not even Giles – that cut into his thoughts.

"Mmm."

"How do you cope?"

Escaping. Right.

"Cope with what?"

"You make mistakes. You must. Everyone makes mistakes… "

Lestrade remembered, on his couch, a much younger man from a long time ago.

_I was stupid and my mates were stupid and a man's died._

He remembered, too, the stack of cold case files in his bottom drawer, the scorn in Sherlock's eyes when he saw something all of them had missed.

"I make mistakes. All the time, Giles. All the time, and murderers walk free, and – "

"How do you cope with it? Knowing that mistakes cost lives."

"I…"

Lestrade didn't know how he coped. He just put his head down and kept going. What else could he do?

Maybe that was the answer.

"I just keep going, Giles. I make mistakes, and so does my team, and so does every other homicide team in London. But at the end of the day, there are fewer lives lost than there would have been if we didn't do what we do. That's got to count for something, right?"

"Don't you ever wish for second chances?"

_Didn't_ he? "And third. And fourth, and tenth, and more."

"Do you ever get them?"

"Well… you kept coming back, didn't you?"

A pause on the other end of the line, and Giles said, "You kept giving me chances to come back. Even after…"

"Yeah, well. Maybe we both needed a few extra chances."

"Right," and though Giles spoke hesitantly, it was enough.

"So hurry up and sort yourself out so you can come back, eh?"

"I am _never_," Giles said, "coming back to someone who thinks the spoken section belongs at the end of 'Nights in White Satin.'"

"The Moody Blues _recorded_ it there!"

"I've got to go. I can't listen to this nonsense."

Fair enough. It was late – someone's phone bill was going to be hell. And Sherlock was still holed up in his bedroom. God only knew what he was doing in there.

"'Night, Giles."

"Good night."

Sherlock gave him a long, hard look when he came out of Lestrade's bedroom, but for once, he didn't say anything.

In return, Lestrade gave him a new cold case.

* * *

It was sort of like leading a double life.

During the day (and some evenings – and nights, and weekends), Lestrade dealt with crime scenes from the mundane to the nightmarish. The more gruesome the case, the more likely it was that Sherlock would show an interest. In a way, that was good, because those were the cases where they most needed him, but at the same time, it made Lestrade worry a little. Sherlock wasn't paid, and if anyone ever asked there would be no way to justify his presence at Lestrade's crime scenes, so it was not an entirely comforting thought that he didn't _really_ know whether or not his murders were being solved by the sociopath Sherlock claimed to be.

Still, the cases were solved. That was something, in any case.

Increasingly often, too, Lestrade had begun to notice the other man – Sherlock's brother – hovering at the edges of his crime scenes, and not always on days when Sherlock was there. It shouldn't unnerve him as much as it did; after all, Mycroft (what _was_ it with these people's names?) had been far less intrusive than Sherlock. But he never seemed to _do_ anything, just stood there and observed and occasionally exchanged words with his brother – heated on Sherlock's part, calm and sort of supercilious on Mycroft's.

Whatever. It wasn't Lestrade's problem, any of it.

"What does your brother _do_?" he asked Sherlock one day as they supervised the removal of several bodies from an alleyway (well, he supervised; Sherlock snapped at Anderson and his subordinates as they worked and was summarily ignored).

"Everything," said Sherlock. "Anything he can control, he does."

"What d'you mean, _anything_?"

"Precisely that." Sherlock sounded annoyed at having to clarify. "Has he told you that he has a government position?"

"He hasn't told me anything."

"Good. Don't trust anything he says. His 'government position' essentially entails quietly running the entire United Kingdom from behind his office door."

"Mmm. Well, good to know someone's in charge."

Though really, given any choice in the matter, Lestrade wasn't sure he would have chosen a Holmes for the job.

And that was the day life – the one that was supposed to be _normal_. He scoffed at the word. Nothing was 'normal' where Sherlock was concerned.

At night, he had a very different kind of life, and very little of it really seemed to belong to him anymore. Sherlock, of course, invaded his flat on a regular basis, and Lestrade had begun to wonder why he didn't charge the younger man rent. (Because he had no money, of course, because he had no paid employment, and that, too, was Lestrade's fault for encouraging it.) Giles telephoned not infrequently nowadays as well, and that was nice, because those evenings had music and sympathetic conversation (sad that it was actually _strange_ to talk to someone who cared about what he had to say) and even, occasionally, laughter.

That was something else he had nearly forgotten about lately. Not much laughter in heading up a murder squad, not much in sitting alone in his flat or dealing with Sherlock's casual insolence. He and Giles were still good for one another, then – even if Giles did cut himself off abruptly every so often, even if it was obvious there were things his friend wouldn't or couldn't say.

_When were there not?_ he reminded himself, and this weird limbo – constant presence of two men who were not friends, and constant distance of the only one who was – well, that was how it was.

He'd never been one to try and fight what he was handed. Just put his head down and kept going, like he'd told Giles.

Sherlock's deductions continued to improve his records. Eventually, they put him in charge of an entire Major Investigation Team. It was not, perhaps, quite what it ought to have been; a responsibility like that was meant to come with a promotion to DCI, but they let him keep his team together, and he supposed that was enough.

So he kept on keeping on, and if it was an odd way to spend his days, mocked by a brilliant sociopath and silently supervised by the British government personified, it worked for him.

And then one day the routine broke.

The phone call he received from Giles this time didn't begin with "Hi" or "Lestrade" or even a slow, drawn-out "Detective Inspector," half-mocking and half-respectful.

This time there was just a broken "Greg – " swallowed at the end by a choked sob, and then silence, except for the sound of ragged breathing at the other end.

It didn't matter. He knew who it was, despite the awful rawness of the voice, nearly unrecognizable as his friend's own. There was only one person alive, one person who would have reason to telephone, who ever called him Greg.

"Giles," he said softly down the line. "Giles, what happened?"

"I – " and the other man was struggling, trying to force out the words, but nothing was coming.

"Slow down," he said firmly. He might always have lagged a little behind Giles, might always have been a little shyer, less willing to put himself on the line, but he was a _senior police officer_, goddammit, and if he couldn't take command of a situation like this, he hadn't learnt much.

"I – Greg, I – she's – "

"No, slow _down_. Take a deep breath. Sod it, that's stupid advice. Take a _lot_ of deep breaths. It's no use keeping on if you can't talk."

There was a bitter huff from the other side of the call that might have almost been a laugh, dry with pain and whatever else was going on with Giles right now. It scared Lestrade more than his friend's inability to get the words out, more than the fact that he was bloody well _crying_. Lestrade had never even considered the fact that Giles might be capable of crying.

"Nothing…" Giles said finally, "to keep on _for_."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

He didn't mean it, of course. This was _Giles_ and there was no one else like him, no one else at all, and all Lestrade wanted to do was _fix_ whatever it was that had gone wrong. But a little roughness might shake Giles out of his own head, might give him enough to catch a foothold and keep going, tell him what had happened.

It worked, too.

"She's gone, Greg. Just – _gone_. Saving us all. _Again_…"

Lestrade swallowed. "Who's gone, Giles?" But he had a fairly good idea.

_Responsible for someone. Their life in your hands._

He'd thought about it time and again since Giles had said it to him. Every time Sherlock turned up at his flat injured through his own blind stupidity. Every time he didn't see the young detective for a few days and started to worry about needles and seven percent solutions and highs and withdrawals. Every time they started another case and Sherlock leapt at yet another chance to get himself killed.

"Greg, I'm…" He paused, audibly composing himself. "Coming back. To England."

To England? Despite the situation, Lestrade felt a shock of excitement – his friend, back where he belonged, back where they could, maybe, pick up where they'd left off. Later. Not now.

"What do you need from me?" he asked simply.

Giles was quiet.

"I'll come and get you at the airport," he said. "I'll get time off work. You're staying at mine."

"Look, you don't have to – "

"Shut up, of course I don't. I bloody _want_ to, you idiot."

He almost didn't hear the whispered, "Thank you," from his broken friend.

* * *

"Sherlock."

It was the third time he'd said the younger man's name, and he had yet to provoke a reaction.

He sighed, went over to the couch and laid a hand over the file Sherlock was reading.

"_Sherlock._"

That earned him an annoyed look, but at least Sherlock was paying attention. "Mmm."

"This is important, Sherlock."

The detective rolled over on the couch, scattering papers across the floor, and sat up. "_What?_"

"I have a friend coming to stay."

"And?"

"And I don't know for how long, or what shape he'll be in when he gets here. And he matters to me. And I'm going to need to help him."

"_And?_"

"And you're going to have to stay somewhere else for a bit, Sherlock."

"Why?"

"What d'you mean, why? I've just told you why."

"Not in anyone's way here."

"Are you joking? Look around you, you've taken over the entire room. And I've only got this one and the bedroom. There isn't _room_ for three people here."

Sherlock looked steadily at him. "You haven't seen him in years – _I've_ known you five years and you haven't seen him once. You don't talk about anything important when you talk, which isn't often. You're lonely, and he hasn't done anything to change that. Yet you're willing to drop everything and toss me out on the strength of a single conversation."

"Yes."

"You're farther gone than I thought."

"Don't talk to me about things you don't know anything about."

"Don't end sentences in prepositions."

"Sherlock, he needs me, you don't. Simple as that."

"I haven't anywhere else to go."

"Then – find a flat! You're not supposed to be _living_ here, I just can't help you breaking in!"

"You don't want to stop me. You haven't even tried in five years."

"Well, I am now."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "_Fine._ But it won't be easy, you know."

"Stopping you?"

"My finding a new flatmate. I must be very difficult to live with."

"Christ, if only you knew."

* * *

Sherlock slept in Lestrade's flat that night, but the next evening, the front door lock didn't slide open untouched by a key, the papers on the couch remained unruffled, and Lestrade didn't see Sherlock at all.

He worried his lower lip with his teeth and didn't sleep, sitting up against the headboard of his bed with his mobile in one hand. He'd wanted Sherlock out (maybe – or maybe not, really; he wasn't even sure anymore), needed him out (definitely), but that didn't mean he wasn't going to think of a thousand things that might happen to the young detective, a thousand stupid decisions he might make as soon as he was cast adrift.

Giles wouldn't be arriving right away – had to "take care of business," he'd said – but now that Lestrade had said something to him, Sherlock seemed to be beating the hastiest of all possible retreats. Several more days passed and Lestrade saw Sherlock at work, at crime scenes, approaching for long enough to tell the older man exactly how the murders had taken place. The moment Lestrade tried to pin him down, though, and ask him where he was staying or what he was doing for money, he was off again, shouting something unintelligible from the other side of the blue-and-white police tape. The avoidance wasn't even subtle – but then again, it didn't need to be; it was working anyway.

On a crime scene that Sherlock had, it appeared, deemed too boring to attend, Lestrade noticed Mycroft Holmes lingering again. He tossed a quick glance at the sky (overcast, a little; almost, but not quite, enough to justify the ridiculous umbrella to which the elder Holmes seemed surgically attached) and then focused on his work, attempting to ignore Mycroft despite the fact that it was plain he was here for no other reason than to talk to Lestrade.

It almost worked, too, until the Major Investigation Team was packing up to leave and Lestrade reached for the driver's side door of the nearest panda car. A hand reached out and caught him, slender fingers curling around his wrist.

"Inspector."

"Mr. Holmes." Sherlock, of course, never referred to his brother as anything other than 'Mycroft' (well, and 'git,' 'tosspot,' 'pillock' and any other mild profanities he could think of), but Lestrade wasn't comfortable enough with the man's presence to attempt a first name. He was fairly certain he would _never_ be comfortable enough for that.

"I hear my brother has vacated your premises."

"Yes, well…" He wasn't sure how to justify his request that Sherlock remove himself elsewhere without bringing Giles into the equation, and he didn't really want Mycroft to know about Giles. He didn't really want to talk about Giles at all.

"Rest assured, Inspector, I am not here to question your decision. In fact, I applaud it."

"You… _applaud_ it?"

"Someone has to put an end to Sherlock's flightiness someday," Mycroft said with an air of infinite suffering. "You are in a unique position to do so, and forcing him into independence will do wonders for him."

"… Right." Of all the things Lestrade had been anticipating, approval had not been one of them. He'd expected to have to come up with hasty arguments in favour of his position, protests that his flat was, after all, his own and that Sherlock had never been meant to actually _stay_ there long-term.

"I merely wished to reassure you that Sherlock will not be in any danger now that he is seeking accommodations elsewhere."

"I…" What was he about to say? _I wasn't worried? Of course I bloody was, still keeps me up at night, doesn't it?_

"I watch him. Constantly."

_You're a bit unsettling, aren't you?_ "You watch him."

"Yes, I have… the ability to supervise him, to a certain degree."

"Then why the bloody hell didn't you do that in the _first_ place?" It was far more forward than Lestrade had intended to be, but this Holmes was starting to look like a figurative Big Brother, as well as a literal one, and it was creeping the hell out of him. "How good can your 'supervision' be if I had to keep him in _my_ flat and get him off the drugs? Why couldn't _you_?"

Mycroft's smile was thin and strained. "I can observe him, Inspector, and ensure that he is kept in safety. What I cannot do is govern his decisions."

"From what he tells me, that's about all you can't govern."

"Sherlock is also quite given to… hyperbole."

"If you say so."

* * *

"Bloody hell. How can there be three of them all alike?"

Sally Donovan gave him a sympathetic look. "Mass hysteria? Cult? Saw it on a television show?"

He groaned. "Why did she have to be so damned high-profile? We're going to have to have a press conference."

"We know how much you love those."

"The whole _department_ knows how he feels about those," a new voice cut in.

Lestrade shot Anderson a meaningful look and the younger man subsided. "Sorry, chief."

"This afternoon," he decided. "Work your scheduling magic, Donovan, I'm going to need you out there."

His phone buzzed suddenly, unexpectedly, and the speed with which he pulled it from his pocket was indicative of deeply-ingrained reflexes. Chances were good (who was he kidding? there was a _one hundred percent_ chance) that it was Sherlock texting him, and the detective was not exactly known for his spectacular decision-making skills.

He thought again of Mycroft's presence at his crime scene the other day, and by the time he had called up the text to read, annoyance shared equal status with anxiety.

_221B Baker Street_, it read.

"That's not even a message!"

"Sorry, sir?"

"Nothing, Donovan."

He texted his response instead. _That's an address, not a message – what do you expect me to do with it?_

_It's mine._

_Your what?_

_My flat, Lestrade, don't be any less intelligent than you have to be._

_You can't afford a flat._

_The situation would seem to prove otherwise._

He sighed. He wasn't even going to try getting Sherlock to explain. There was a press conference to worry about.

* * *

His prepared speech, read by Sally, went over adequately; she didn't even have to add anything to his carefully-written explanations. He could have read them out himself, instead of sitting next to her trying to look authoritative. Nonetheless, he was quite grateful she was there, because no one else on his team could manage journalists the way she could – and today, the reporters seemed quite determined to get out of hand.

"How can suicides be linked?"

"You can't have serial suicides!"

Well, dammit, yes, you could, or else something else was going on and he had absolutely no evidence on which to explore that possibility. And God only knew he wasn't prepared to address it in front of a crowd of hungry-shark wordslingers from various newspapers.

"These three people," someone asked, "there's nothing that links them?"

He tried to stumble through an answer, because as far as he knew there was nothing – but an assortment of beeps and tweets sounded around the room, and Sally picked up her phone.

"If you've all got texts, ignore them."

His heart sank a little. _Thank you for that, Sherlock._

The bugger didn't stop at one, either. Three times he did it, three bloody times, before Lestrade's own mobile gave off its signal and he picked it up.

_You know where to find me. SH_

221B Baker Street, apparently.

He was fully prepared to ignore Sherlock's texts – both the one to him and those to the reporters – but the universe was absolutely determined to wear him down today, because almost as soon as he got back to the office, there was a call. Another suicide.

Or not, if Sherlock was to be believed. And when was he ever not?

Subconsciously, one hand came up to scrub the hair at the back of his head. He was already tired, and he _needed_ to take an evening one of these days to reclaim his flat from Sherlock's inadvertently destructive tendencies and make it livable for Giles' imminent arrival as well as for himself.

Well, not today.

Ignoring Sally's pleas not to, he reserved a panda car and went to fetch Sherlock from the new flat he couldn't possibly have, because it was in bloody Westminster and would cost about a million pounds a month.

But this was Sherlock, and of bloody _course_ he would have landed on his feet like this.

And of bloody _course_ that wasn't the end of it.

A fourth suicide (_death_, Lestrade corrected himself; couldn't be caught implying it might be a _suicide_ around Sherlock) – a fourth one, and they had only just finished dealing with the press about the first three.

God, he was tired.

But he found 221B Baker Street without a problem, in through the open door and up the staircase to rout out Sherlock's assistance.

Sherlock was there, on the far side of the room. He'd have deduced immediately why Lestrade was here, but he was standing by the window, looking studiously uninterested. There were other people there, in the surprisingly well-appointed flat, and Lestrade gave them a quick, evaluative glance – an older lady clearly nervous about his presence; a bland-looking man sitting in a chair. Lestrade's eyes glossed over them almost completely.

_Ah._ No wonder Sherlock was being so aloof. _Bloody show-off._

But it wasn't the other people he needed, and he only acknowledged their presence enough to check the more forceful convincing he might otherwise have used and _ask_ Sherlock, bloody _ask_, like he was looking for a favour.

(Well, he was.)

(True, but it wasn't as though he wasn't _owed_ a few.)

That Sherlock agreed to come was a small mercy, and with one final quick glance over the flat (he hadn't done badly for himself at all… _how_ did he keep managing these things? and without even the assistance of that toff brother?), Lestrade slid back into the panda car and took himself off to the scene of the fourth suicide – no – death.

It would have been nice, he thought, if Sherlock had had the courtesy to tell him these weren't suicides _before_ the damned press conference.

It was business as usual, though, stress, backpedalling, dealing with the body, dealing with _Anderson_ – until Sherlock showed up. Well. Not so much Sherlock; his team were used to putting up with that by now.

But Sherlock brought the quiet, unassuming man from 221B with him. And despite the abandoned house, despite the body on the floor, despite everything, it wasn't until then that the evening took a turn for the stranger. For the _absolutely bollocking mad_, _completely-sack-of-hammers_ stranger.

He was exhausted, exasperated, and so when Sherlock got the man to examine the body, let him walk all over a protected crime scene, and then simply left him behind and took off like he always did, Lestrade decided he was best off just ignoring it. He did send Sherlock one text, though.

_Sherlock, who the bloody hell is he?_

The text he got back was less than informative.

_Flatmate. Keep up._

How the hell did a man like Sherlock Holmes find a flatmate? Where in God's name had he found someone who would put up with, well, _him_?

_You did_, he reminded himself. _And you still would, if not for other things._

And then the night went _straight_ to hell, because he remembered what Sherlock had said about the suitcase, and he knew the detective wouldn't let up until he'd found it, which naturally he wouldn't think worth mentioning to Lestrade – so he had to call out his team again, descend upon the flat Sherlock had inhabited for less than twenty-four hours, and terrify the poor landlady with a 'police investigation.' And a kidnapping (of sorts; Sherlock had gone willingly, so it wasn't a charge he would have been able to press even if there had been someone on whom to lay the accusation). And a shooting (of sorts; although that _was_ a charge he could have pressed, Sherlock was being… less than forthcoming about the shooter, whom there was no _way_ Lestrade would believe he couldn't identify). And the biggest bloody pile of paperwork Lestrade had ever seen.

Arriving home at four o'clock in the morning, knowing that he only had an hour or two before he had to be back at the Yard for _more_ paperwork, was not pleasant. He unplugged the phone, turned off his mobile, and settled in to salvage what shreds of the night he still could for sleep.

* * *

Also not pleasant was arriving at Scotland Yard at six o'clock that same morning to a message stuck on his office door, informing him that he'd had a phone call from a Rupert Giles. He ought to have known better than to unplug his home phone.

The message was simple and direct, flight information written in Sally Donovan's bold block script. He checked the dates (realized he had no idea what _today's_ date was; that was what he got for allowing himself to sleep for an hour – he'd been a police officer for a long time and ought to know better). One week. Not a lot of time to prepare, but then again, Giles had started out sleeping on a shabby couch in an even shabbier room in Peckham. They were older now, older and far away from what they once had been, but even so, Lestrade was pretty certain that a comfortable bed wasn't really the reason Giles was coming back to him.

Paperwork was the driving force that day, paperwork and the re-identification of last night's body. He supposed it could have been far worse; after all, he might have been writing "Sherlock Holmes" on every sheet of paper instead of "Jefferson Hope." He ought to have been displeased – either at the loss of human life, or at the loss of the opportunity to exercise justice on this man – but he wasn't. He didn't care one way or another. What mattered was that people were kept safe. The longer he lived, the longer he worked in homicide, the less he cared how it was done.

"Taking off early," he told Sally that afternoon, swinging his jacket over his shoulder, quietly thrilled at the prospect of getting to do something other than work for an evening. Maybe he'd even sleep.

"But sir – what about the Edmonton Green incident?"

He sighed, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "Edmonton Green isn't even in our command area."

"No, sir, but DI Gregson – "

"Tell Gregson to work his own bloody cases for once!" he snapped, then instantly regretted it. "Sorry – sorry, it's just – haven't slept… Tell Gregson we'll have a look at it in the morning, if he still needs a hand."

"Right away, sir."

Maybe it was a good thing he was taking the night off.

He ended up needing several free evenings over the course of the week, and it was strange – he'd never had so much time away from work at once before, yet he was no less busy. Clearing up after Sherlock took more time than he'd anticipated. Files ended up shoved into loose stacks in the corner of the living room; strange, not-quite-identifiable liquids were assigned their own shelf in the refrigerator and he sent several increasingly irritated text messages along the lines of 'if you don't come and get these things, I'm remitting them to Biohazard and you'll never see them again.'

_Will pick up shortly. No room in refrigerator._

_How can you not have room in your refrigerator? You've only just moved in._

_John insists on keeping milk._

_Oh, well, I suppose one jug of milk absolutely explains it, then._

_I also have items that require refrigeration._

'Items.'

Bloody hell.

He pushed the noxious-looking bottles to the very back of their shelf and surrounded them with empty takeaway boxes, hoping that the display wouldn't inspire too many awkward questions.

Less than an hour before he was supposed to meet his friend, Lestrade was still finding things Sherlock had left behind – old photocopies of Whitechapel murder reports, chemical analyses of various cigarettes, something that looked like a set of blueprints. Glancing at the clock, he hastily stuffed all of it into his bookshelf, reasoning that if Sherlock ever remembered it, he could look for it his own damned self; then, deciding it was as good a job as he was going to manage, he stepped out onto the sun-warmed pavement, eyes searching the traffic for a cab.

After the case with the pink lady, it felt strange to step into the vehicle, as trusting as ever. He didn't really have much choice, though, did he? Lifeblood of London, black cabs were, and it might have been pushing it to try to snag a panda car again so soon.

"Heathrow, please, down the M4. Extra if it's less than half an hour."

Given the route and the time of day, the fact that the cabbie earned his extra was, frankly, astonishing.

* * *

_Old._

That was Lestrade's first impression of his friend, spotting Giles before Giles spotted him.

Not old in the traditional sense; actually, if he were quite honest with himself, Giles wore the years since they'd last met far better than he did. But the way he stood was old, the way he carried himself as he retrieved his bags and straightened, looking for a familiar face, the way the once-brilliantly-green eyes were dulled with sadness even when his gaze locked with Lestrade's and he forced a smile.

Not old by nature, then, but aged unfairly by life.

So they did still have things in common.

When he made it across the customs barrier and into the arrivals proper, Giles nodded to his friend in greeting, unsure of what he could possibly say.

_Too many secrets_, Lestrade thought. _They're hurting you. They'll only go on hurting you._

He didn't speak the words aloud, though; instead, he reached out and pulled the other man into a tight hug. Giles was here, and he was – well, not all right, but safe, at least – and at the moment, very little else mattered.

They didn't talk much on the ride home ("Need to stop for anything on the way?" Quick look, quick smile, "No, thank you,"), and it was only when they reached the flat in Kilburn that Lestrade remembered that his friend had never seen it.

"You've done all right for yourself," Giles said, looking around. The flat was sparsely furnished, lacked much personality, but Lestrade liked it that way. He had made one or two changes in the week or so since Sherlock had left. Now, his album collection was stacked in one corner of the living room, next to the turntable he'd also moved; his guitar rested against the coffee table in its case. He'd done all that deliberately. If he couldn't help his friend, maybe the music could.

He shrugged. "Does the job."

Another one of those quick, not-quite-real smiles. "Isn't that always the way it is?"

Instead of answering, he fixed his friend with a steady gaze.

"Look," he said eventually. "You don't have to talk to me. Maybe you don't want to talk at all. That's fine. I get it. But just – " He paused, got his thoughts together. "Just don't _pretend_, okay? I know you better than that."

Giles averted his eyes, but nodded. Lestrade deserved that small courtesy, at least.

"Right. This is yours – " he gestured to the couch, now pulled out into a double bed – "and… well, all of it. Drinks in the fridge, top shelf. No food. Sorry. But you've had my cooking…"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Which is why I thought we'd just get a takeaway or something."

There. Fleeting, but a grin that wasn't just put on for show.

"So anyway, yeah, make yourself at home. All right if I run down the corner, get us some food? Been a long flight, I reckon."

"Please."

* * *

He waited in the little Chinese restaurant around the corner from his flat, standing in the corner as various customers came in and out, carrying cardboard boxes and Styrofoam containers full of food. He could have ordered ahead and waited for it to be ready; he could also have had it delivered, but he'd wanted to give Giles a bit of space to settle in. A bit of time to realize that, regardless of what he'd been through, regardless of what he was dealing with right now, he was in a good place. Lestrade wasn't going to push him – he could say as much or as little as he liked.

He just needed Giles to be all right.

Lost in thought and worry, he hardly noticed another customer enter to stand close behind him – and started with an exaggerated jerk when a voice at his shoulder said, "Imagine meeting you here, Inspector."

He looked angrily behind him at the tall figure of Mycroft Holmes. "I _live_ here. You know that. So what are you here for? I haven't seen Sherlock since last night."

"No," said Mycroft. "I am, for once, fully assured of my brother's whereabouts and safety."

"Right," said Lestrade, clearing his throat. It was strange that a single sentence from the man could seem so… _creepy_… but then again, he _was_ Sherlock's brother. "So what do you want? Sorry, I'm a bit busy."

"I know. Your… houseguest."

"Yeah." He wasn't going to be any more forthcoming than that, not with Mycroft, not about Giles. The last thing his friend needed right now was someone like _that_ taking an undue interest.

Mycroft raised both eyebrows. "Please, Inspector. There's no need to be hostile. I am here only to help."

"What? Thanks, but – I don't need help."

"No. But your friend does."

_He knows about Giles?_

The look on his face was betraying him; he could feel it. Jesus, did _both_ Holmeses know absolutely bloody everything?

"Why would you help _me_?"

"I feel I… owe you, in some measure. For your assistance with Sherlock."

"You don't _owe_ me for anything. I helped Sherlock because it was the decent thing to do, not because of you." _And because he was getting on my nerves, and because I needed his help, and because I couldn't let him onto crime scenes while he was high_, but Lestrade didn't add any of that. No doubt Mycroft knew anyway.

"Nevertheless," the taller man said, bending slightly so that he could lower his voice. "If you want to help your friend, I would suggest you begin by asking him about the Watchers' Council."

He straightened and, before Lestrade could shake off total confusion and splutter a "What – ?" Mycroft was gone.

* * *

"Music," he said, setting out the takeaway containers. "D'you want some?"

"What've you got?"

"Anything you like," and he waved a hand at the stack of records in the corner.

Giles flipped through them and, with a secret smile not meant for Lestrade, slid one out of the pile. "This one."

"Go on, then. And get us some drinks, would you?"

The needle scratched for a moment, then caught and held on the first notes of "Who Loves the Sun."

"Really? _Fully Loaded_?" Lestrade gave Giles a sceptical look.

"It's in _your_ collection. I suppose you prefer the self-titled album."

"Yeah, well, I liked the Velvet Underground _before_ they were famous." But Lestrade's tone was self-deprecating and he grinned at his friend. "Drinks. Top shelf."

"Right."

The refrigerator door swung open behind Lestrade and he heard Giles poking through the cans and bottles. He'd guessed as to what to lay in, so there was everything from fruit juice to London Pride. As he opened up the final container, digging in the bottom of the bag for disposable forks and chopsticks, there was a crash from the kitchen behind him.

He jumped up – "You okay?"

Giles let the door to the refrigerator fall shut. "You – there's _blood_ in your refrigerator."

"Is there?" Must have been in one of those bottles of Sherlock's he'd put aside.

"Why is there blood in your refrigerator?"

"I – " and he gave up. There was no reasonable way to explain Sherlock Holmes. "I had an… inadvertent flatmate for a while. Bit of a forensic scientist. Come on, let's eat. I've been trying to get him to take that stuff away for ages."

They sat on the couch and tucked into what was mostly unidentifiable bits of meat and veg. "Sorry about that," Lestrade said after a few minutes' silence. "I guess that sort of thing isn't exactly commonplace. I seem to've gotten a bit used to it."

Giles laughed, but the sound was hollow. "Maybe you're not the only one."

"Eh?"

"I… lived in California," he said wearily. "I've seen everything."

"I'd have thought crazy people breaking into your house at night and sticking bottles of blood into your fridge was a bit extreme even for America."

"Well," said Giles. "Mine usually waited for an invitation."

* * *

He retreated to his room after they ate, giving his friend space, but leaving the door wide open – a clear invitation in case Giles wanted to talk. In the meantime, he sat on the edge of the bed, flipped open his laptop (he could almost _feel_ Giles disapproving; his friend was a bit less than fond of computers in general), and called up a browser window.

Then, he sat motionless in front of the search field, wondering if he really ought to do this.

After all, if Giles had wanted him to know about this, he would have said something.

After all, though Mycroft Holmes had never actually done anything illegal, he was still a difficult man to trust.

But after all, he had said 'if you want to help your friend,' and right now that mattered to Lestrade more than almost anything.

He typed in 'watchers council' and clicked 'Search.'

Forty-five minutes later and no wiser, he looked up at the sound of a creak in the floorboards and saw Giles standing in the doorway. The sight almost made him smile, because he hadn't seen his friend's characteristic shifting stance of nervousness in years, and it hadn't changed at all – but he suppressed the urge, because now was probably not a good time for that.

"Well, come on, then."

He snapped the laptop shut, shoved it to one side, and gestured with his head – _come here, sit down_, and when Giles did, he slipped an arm around the taller man's shoulders, just like he'd done the last time he'd come to Lestrade, scared and broken. The difference was that this time, his friend was much better at hiding it.

"D'you want to talk about it?" he asked carefully.

"… Not really, no."

"Right." He hadn't thought so, but he didn't know what else he had to offer. Music seemed trite, whether they were playing or listening, and he was fairly certain his usual methods with Sherlock – looking over a few interesting murders – weren't going to be much good here.

_If you want to help your friend…_

"Giles," he said, voice steady, "can I ask you a question?"

"Hmm."

"Tell me about the Watchers' Council."

He didn't know what he was expecting – maybe confusion from his friend, maybe evasiveness, maybe a questioning look (how did you know?).

He wasn't expecting Giles to pull away so fast he nearly fell off the bed, scrambling to his feet and standing over Lestrade, eyes wild.

"What do you know about the Watchers' Council?" his friend demanded, in a tone that brooked no resistance. He looked ready to fight, and Lestrade quickly raised both hands in a placating gesture.

"I – nothing!" he said. "Look, calm down! I was only asking."

"Who told you about it?"

"No one I really know, just a… guy…" How did you explain _Mycroft Holmes_?

"What did he tell you? _Why_ did he tell you?"

Christ. What _was_ this Watchers' Council? Lestrade almost wished he hadn't said anything, but then again, if just saying the words was provoking this sort of a reaction, well, perhaps Mycroft did know what he was talking about after all.

"He didn't tell me anything. He just said…" and here he trailed off, because he couldn't very well tell Giles what Mycroft had said.

"Said what?"

He sighed. "He said if I really wanted to help you, that's what I should do. Ask about that. Christ, Giles, don't _look_ like that!"

They stared at one another, Giles' fists clenched at his sides and tautness running through every muscle, Lestrade's hands still helplessly upraised.

_Trust me_, he willed his friend. _Just trust me, will you?_

With effort, Giles let his hands uncurl, then sat heavily down at the end of the bed, as far away from Lestrade as he could.

_Good. That's good. Right?_

"How did your friend know about the Council?"

"He's not my friend. Just someone who shows up at crime scenes sometimes. _Not_ with permission, mind. But he's supposedly some highly-placed government official. Knows all sorts of things he shouldn't."

The look he was getting went beyond merely scrutinizing, as if Giles were trying to dissect everything he might or might not know about this Council thing. But he was used to that – five years of Sherlock didn't give you much choice in the matter – and his clear gaze met and held the other man's unwaveringly.

"Look," he said, when Giles finally glanced away. "I'm not going to make you tell me anything. What bloody good would I be as a friend if I did?" He wished he could stop there, wished he didn't have to say the rest. It would be so much easier. "But look at you. You're _falling apart_. I'm not an idiot, Giles. I can _help_. But you've got to talk."

Giles shook his head, a half-smile of amusement on his face. "You can't help."

"Well, you could _bloody let me try_!"

The ferocity of his reaction startled him. He hadn't meant to growl the words – had hardly realized he meant to say them at all. He just felt so _helpless_ sitting here, with Giles unwilling to say anything and Sherlock leaving bottles of blood in the refrigerator and Mycroft, _Mycroft_ with his mysterious secrecy and his smug half-truths and his obviously knowing things Giles didn't want known.

That was the worst of it. That Giles had chosen to keep this from Lestrade, never mind why, and Mycroft bloody Holmes thought he knew better.

And here he was, taking it out on his friend. Who needed him. Who had come to him for help.

"Fuck," he muttered. "I'm sorry."

Giles blew out a breath through gritted teeth, fingers gripping the short strands of his hair and tugging. "I want to talk about it," he said. "Christ, you _deserve_ to know. You've been putting up with it for longer than anyone."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not allowed to… oh, sod it, sod them, sod everything they claim to stand for. It doesn't _mean_ anything anymore. Lying, traitorous…"

"_Who?_"

"The Watchers' Council," said Giles disgustedly. "And I'm part of it."

"But what _are_ they?"

The man sitting across from him sighed. "How much time have you got?"

"As much as you need."

He slid down to the end of the bed to sit with Giles, half-turning his back to his friend so that they didn't have to look at one another. He was guessing that the conversation would be difficult enough without forcing Giles to say everything to his face – but what he got instead was arms slipping around him, pulling him in so that they were leaning against one another, warm, solid and comforting.

He breathed out slowly. Years – God, half a decade or more – and he'd never forgotten this, the way it felt, the things it did to him. He'd also never realized how desperately he missed it.

"What scared you?" Giles asked softly. "As a child, what scared the hell out of you?"

"My dad."

The truth, but not what Giles was going for. "Not like that. In the dark. Under your bed. At the window. You know."

"I dunno, I guess… monsters? Ghosts?"

"Yeah. Vampires, demons, werewolves. Gods." His voice broke on the last word, and Lestrade looked up sharply to see closed eyes, a mouth tautened to a thin, grim line.

"You were scared of _gods_?"

With effort, Giles brought himself back. "What if all of that were true?"

"What, vampires and werewolves?"

"Yes. And worse. Much, much worse."

A long pause. Lestrade knew the obvious answer, but his friend's demeanour, his tone of voice, all of it belied that.

Finally, he said the only thing he could say. "I'd say you were taking the piss."

"Yes," was the thoughtful response – slow, drawn-out, _sad_. "Of course you would. That would be sensible."

There was more, though. Something Giles wanted to say and wasn't.

"And?"

"And wrong."

"Piss off," but he said it very, very softly.

"Listen," Giles said to him. "There's a lot I've never told you. But tell me – have I ever lied to you?"

He didn't need to think about it, even for a moment. "No."

"I wish none of it were true. You don't know how badly…"

But Lestrade felt the arm around him grip tightly, felt fingers dig into his shoulder, felt the barest tremble of the warm body against him, and did know.

He couldn't say he believed it – bloody _vampires_, for Chrissakes – but Giles did, and so it was important. "Tell me," he whispered.

It took Giles a long time to begin, but Lestrade was in no hurry. They had all night, and this mattered more than he could fully understand.

"It's all real," he said at last. "Everything you ever feared when you were young, everything you secretly still fear now, just a little. All of it. Ever had a murder you couldn't solve?"

Lestrade mentally amended the question to, _Have you ever had a murder Sherlock couldn't solve?_ and was surprised to find that the answer was still, "Yes."

"Humanity is pretty bad, but it's not the only thing out there. But there are people on our side, too. Well – not just _people_."

"'Not just people?'"

"There are good people, Lestrade, and there are bad people. You should know, you see it every day. There's no reason why the same shouldn't be true of… non-humans."

"I wasn't aware that you could have a _good_ demon."

"Neutral demons, good demons, vampires with – souls – " He broke off, swallowed, kept going as his voice trailed softer and softer. "There's a lot of strength on our side. A lot of apocalypses that could have happened, and didn't."

Lestrade recognized the strangled sound of his friend's voice, distant echo from a broken man in a broken-down flat, years ago – no, more. He was completely at a loss for anything to say, though, so he shifted in Giles' grip until he could get an arm around his friend and offer him wordless support the way he had so long ago.

"I don't know what we're going to do now."

He rested his head on the strong shoulder beside him and asked, "What do you mean, 'now?'"

Giles spoke, and it was barely above a whisper. "I told you I was a Watcher."

He hadn't, not exactly, but he'd come close enough. "You haven't told me what that _is_."

"A Watcher… if we're in a battle between good and evil – and we are, as trite as it sounds – then a Watcher's job is to help the only person who can win us that battle."

"Everything depends on _one person_?"

"It used to," said Giles, and Lestrade felt him shaking with the strain of keeping himself together. "The Slayer."

_Slayer?_ Lestrade, like anyone else, had read his share of horror stories, and he'd never heard of anyone called 'the Slayer.'

All right, then. "Hey, calm down. It's all right. What's a Slayer when it's at home?"

The words came as if from a distance, sounding practised, perfected, like Giles was reading from a script. "Into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl – oh, sodding _hell_."

Okay, the last bit didn't sound much like a script. "What?"

"The Slayer is the Chosen One, Lestrade, stronger, faster, _better_ than an ordinary person. She's – she _was_ – brave and resourceful and self-sacrificing and _I loved her_. I loved her like a daughter and – "

Suddenly, Lestrade didn't care about vampires and Chosen Ones and whatever utter madness was running through Giles' head right now. What mattered was that he was _here_, hurting in ways Lestrade couldn't even begin to imagine, and he thought he'd seen Giles broken before, but that was nothing.

He'd never seen Giles cry. He'd never, ever thought he'd see his strong, solid friend come to pieces like this.

So they sat, and he kept his tight grip and his silence, holding on so that Giles didn't have to.

* * *

"Why," asked Giles, surveying him the next morning through half-open eyes, "do you let me talk?"

They had fallen asleep on the edge of the bed, Lestrade still holding Giles, without a word exchanged. This morning, Lestrade's neck ached from the lack of support and his arms were tingling with pins and needles as the sensation returned to them. Giles' hair was misbehaving in spectacular fashion and his face bore the clear imprint of a cheap Marks & Sparks easycare shirt where he had hidden his face in Lestrade's shoulder.

"Good for you," Lestrade told him. "Unlike last night's attempt at sleep."

Giles shook his head. "All the way from America and this is how I'm treated."

"Shut up. D'you want breakfast?"

So they weren't going to talk about it. Fine.

"Have you got any Weetabix?"

Lestrade stared at him. "You seriously want Weetabix."

"Mine keeps getting… eaten."

"Yeah, all right, I'm pretty sure there's some. If it hasn't been experimented on."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

* * *

Days went by and they didn't talk about any of it again. They didn't talk much at all, Giles preferring to sit in the living room and pick out old standards on Lestrade's guitar while Lestrade sat at the kitchen counter and tried to work despite his having taken vacation days. He'd been surprised to see how much vacation time he'd saved up, given that he never used any of it, but he was glad he had it available to him now.

When they did talk, it was usually halting and uncertain on Lestrade's part. Giles, on the other hand, had pulled together his usual stoic demeanour, and even his quick wit was slowly coming back. They'd always been able to tell when one or the other of them was putting on an act, but Lestrade wasn't getting that now. No artifice; just Giles, a different man than he had been, quieter and with his sly smile gentled just a little on the rare occasions when it fleetingly appeared.

Late on a Friday night, they were in their usual places, Lestrade staring at a set of witness statements and Giles slowly picking out the notes to Buddy Holly's "Learning the Game." Suddenly moved – perhaps by the fact that his old guitar was getting more of a workout than it had in ages, perhaps just because it was his old friend playing it – he pushed aside his pile of paperwork, joined Giles in the living room, and, like he had on the night they'd met, gave the words to his friend's music.

When they finished, Giles said softly, almost wonderingly, "We were good together, weren't we?"

"What do you mean, 'were?' We _are_ good together. We'll _always_ be good together."

"The no-good punk and the straitlaced policeman. I don't think anyone would have seen that coming."

"They'd have a hard time believing you were the punk."

Giles grinned, a little sheepishly. "_I_ sometimes have a hard time believing I was the punk." But the smile vanished quickly, and he slipped back into thoughtfulness.

Lestrade leant against him, nudging him out of his solitude with one shoulder so that Giles reached up and, instead of answering in words, carefully roughed his friend's hair up with hesitant fingertips.

"You don't believe me," he said, leaving his hand where it was.

"Believe you?"

It earned him a rueful look. "Vampires, demons. Magic."

What could he say? _No, not really_ – but how could he admit to that when Giles so badly needed to be believed?

"Does the idea of it scare you?"

"Giles, I'm a homicide detective. I've seen the work of psychopaths and madmen." _I may even have let one stay in the flat. He did experiments on your Weetabix._ "I don't know what vampires have to offer, but I doubt it'll be the worst I've encountered."

Giles' look was sceptical, but he took a deep breath, as if he were trying to convince himself of what he was about to say.

"Tonight, then. Come and see for yourself."

"… See for myself?"

"If you can tear yourself away from that _fascinating_ paperwork."

"You're going to… show me a vampire."

"I believe so, yes."

Lestrade studied him for a long moment, searching for any trace of humour. He found none.

Well, then, maybe it was time he let Giles show him exactly what the world looked like to him. Maybe it would show him how to help.

"All right. Tonight."

* * *

He crouched with Giles behind a cluster of wheelie bins, surveying the empty alleyway in front of them. Giles hadn't said much since they'd left the comfort of Lestrade's flat, and Lestrade hadn't pressed him. He didn't really know why they were in this back alley – or indeed in this part of town at all – nor what they were expecting to find here, nor why Giles was rocking back and forth on his heels, nervously fingering the strap of the bag he was carrying.

"What've you got in that thing, anyway?" he asked. It was not the first time he'd enquired, but it was the first time they hadn't been in a position for Giles to brush him off with some other distraction.

"Things we may need," the man opposite him said darkly.

"What _things_?"

"Shh," was the only reply, and he refocused on the street where Giles was still staring.

They had been there so long that the muscles in Lestrade's calves were beginning to cramp up, and he was shifting to ease the tension on them when Giles suddenly flung an arm across his chest to still him and gestured to the end of the alley with a sharp jerk of his head.

Lestrade looked over. A couple had made their way around the corner and were – well, doing _something_; he wasn't really very keen on looking too closely – against the old brick wall of the nearest building.

He opened his mouth to ask why he was being made privy to this particular sight, but Giles' finger pressed against his lips to cut off the question. His friend shook his head once, then returned to watching the couple, guiding Lestrade's gaze back just as the young man raised his head –

There was something wrong with his _face_.

Lestrade drew in a startled breath, said "Gi – " but his friend was no longer behind him. He looked up just in time to see him take off down the alley, and without even realizing he was moving, Lestrade followed.

He saw the object in his friend's hands too late, a knife – no – was that a _stake_? – and even as he cried out and caught at Giles' elbow, the weapon was buried in the young man's chest.

Spots swam in front of Lestrade's eyes as he grabbed the arm, though the damage was already done. Giles – had his friend just –

"_Are you out of your fucking –_ " _Mind_, his shout was supposed to end, but instead, it was swallowed by a strangled gasp as the man Giles had stabbed disappeared.

Literally.

From a very great distance, he heard Giles' voice, talking to the girl who had been with the… man. Or whatever the _hell_ he had been. Something in the back of his thoughts reminded him, whispered _vampire_, but he wasn't sure he was ready to think about that just yet.

Footsteps; the girl was gone and there was a strong arm around his shoulders as he stared at the empty patch of street where he still expected to see a body.

Giles held out the thing in his hands so that Lestrade could see it. "Wooden stake," he said. "One sure way to kill a vampire."

"Or anyone else," Lestrade rasped weakly.

"Anyone else would still be lying there," Giles pointed out. "Vampires turn to dust. It's awfully convenient."

"You can't just go around stabbing people with bits of wood in case they vanish!" There, that was good. It helped to get a little volume back into his voice. He still didn't know what to think; he knew what he had seen, but his brain still rebelled at the idea that his friend might have – and there _was no body_ –

"There are other ways to tell," Giles assured him softly. "And you saw the face."

He had. There was no denying that.

Once more, he looked at the faint sprinkling of dust across the tarmac where there had just been a…

a vampire, he supposed.

He ran one hand through his hair, gripping hard to remind himself that all this was _real_.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, and felt Giles' arm tighten around him.

* * *

Lestrade wasn't quite sure how they got back to the flat, nor where Giles had managed to procure the whisky that appeared at his elbow shortly thereafter. He knew he was grateful for it, though, and he was on his second tumbler of Talisker eighteen-year when he suddenly realized what he was drinking.

"Bloody hell, Giles, where'd you get this?"

"It was in the – the cupboard under your sink."

"That's – " but he broke off, because he didn't really know what he was going to say. For emergencies? For a rainy day? It didn't really matter what excuse he gave his friend, whatever the hell had just happened in that alleyway certainly merited the drinking of a good Scotch. Or two. Or more.

Giles had a glass of his own.

"I haven't had to do that alone in – well, _years_," he said. "Well, not alone – you know what I – "

"Slayer," said Lestrade. "That was her job, wasn't it?"

"Mmm," replied Giles. "Of course, she couldn't have done it without my help – "

"Right," Lestrade interjected. "Superhuman vampire-killing warrior girl, but only when you're around to help."

Giles knocked back the rest of his whisky. "Sarcasm doesn't suit you."

"The hell it doesn't." And here he was, sitting at his kitchen counter making flippant remarks, but… what else was he supposed to do? He couldn't even _begin_ to process their evening in any sort of logical framework. Men disappearing into dust… Giles with a… with a _wooden stake_…

Some things were just easier put aside, packaged neatly away somewhere in the brain where they never, ever needed to be dealt with. It wasn't as though he didn't have plenty of practice with that sort of wilful ignorance. After all, he worked with _Sherlock Holmes_.

"So is this… is this what you do in America, then? All that time when you were pretending to be a librarian and… and to have students…"

"No, I – I actually _was_ a librarian. Being a Watcher isn't exactly lucrative, you know."

"How, exactly, would I know?"

"Fair point…"

"I had a magic shop for a while, too."

Right. He'd accepted Slayers and Watchers. He'd calmly acquiesced to demons and werewolves and killer death robots in computers. He'd dealt with _vampires_, for God's sake. But some things were just too much.

"A _magic shop_?"

Giles sighed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"You're having me on."

"Yeah, that's right. Of all the things I've told you, the magic shop is the one that isn't true."

"Why aren't you still running it, then? Fall into a hellhole?"

"Hell_mouth_, and no. I gave it to a demon. Well, an ex-demon."

"Of _course_ you did."

* * *

Greg Lestrade had done a lot of unexpected things in his life.

He'd joined the Met, and no one had expected that. He'd become the head of a major investigation team, Detective Inspector on the murder squad, and no one had expected that. He'd done well here, very well – his case-closed rate the highest in the division – and no one had expected that.

Becoming a vampire hunter, though – that was a whole other _realm_ of 'unexpected.' Coming home late from work, just enough time for a hot shower and a mug of coffee before Giles threw a heavily-laden backpack at his feet and chose a destination, well. It wasn't exactly how most people's evenings went. Nor was the standing at the edges of seedy clubs, picking out the subtly different signs of a creature who was not quite human; nor was the crouching in dark, filthy corners of London, watching for the slightest hint of movement; nor was his gradually-improving ability to tell an athame from a trench knife from a mattucashlass in the dark and provide Giles with whichever one he needed.

All in all, it was a good thing his life had accustomed him to taking everything in stride.

Giles was very cautious with him, though, a fact that he outwardly resented and inwardly appreciated. It was still Giles who did all of the work, Giles who chose their destinations and scouted out the locations from which they observed and did the actual… staking. Lestrade still flinched every time Giles stepped out from where they were hiding, and he was never entirely sure whether it was because he feared for his friend's life (and he did, oh, he did; he'd seen a few things since their first patrol together and he knew what could happen) or because he feared that _this_ might be the time that Giles was wrong, that someone innocent died with a stake in his heart.

"You're ready, you know," Giles told him one night.

"What?" he asked. His attention was only half on the odd collection of stakes he was throwing into the backpack because he was simultaneously fending off a series of texts from Sherlock, something about poisons and cold cases and not being allowed into the morgue to do some "examinations."

"You're ready."

"For what?"

In answer, Giles held up a stake, perfectly balanced in his loose grip. He tightened his fingers around it, then released and tossed it to Lestrade.

Lestrade looked at it. "You want _me_ to…?"

"What did you think I was taking you along for? Just to carry the bag? I could've done that alone."

Experimentally, he lifted the stake, feeling the way the rough wood scraped against his skin. One quick lunge forward and –

_No_, he couldn't do this, and he said so.

"You can. You don't have to, but you can."

"No, I bloody can't! I'm a DI with the Metropolitan Police – I can't just go 'round jumping out from behind rubbish skips and shoving bloody great pieces of wood into people's chests! It'd be a bit frowned upon, you know."

"Were you planning to tell anyone?"

"That's not the point! What happens when we run into someone who's just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I don't want to be responsible for that," which was a stupid statement to begin with, because just by going with Giles he was already assuming responsibility, and the fact that he usually spent his early evening hours arming both of them to the teeth was probably rather incriminating, too.

"Have I ever been wrong about this?"

Grudgingly, "No."

"Have _you_?"

No, again, but he'd only been doing this for a little while, and Giles was always there to take over, take charge.

Giles laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. It's full dark; we need to get out there." He took the stake from the outstretched hand and tucked it into Lestrade's jeans pocket, then met his stricken gaze. "Don't worry. I've got you. You'll be fine, and I'll be there in case you aren't."

"Very comforting," he grumbled, but Giles' hand brushed from his shoulder across his cheek, the touch lingering just a fraction of a second longer than necessary, and he straightened and set his jaw.

"All right, then. Let's go."

* * *

They didn't go far from Lestrade's flat that night. Giles said it was because they didn't need to, but Lestrade privately suspected it had just as much to do with the fact that he was a novice and a liability. Still, they found what they were looking for, and Lestrade wasn't sure he ought to be okay with that. The idea of vampires (demons, monsters, whatever – Giles was an equal-opportunity staker) prowling the streets just minutes from his home did not particularly appeal.

Well, then, it was his duty to sort that out, wasn't it?

He spotted her before Giles did (wonder of wonders, or was it just his friend letting him take the credit? but no, this was not something Giles would mess about with), staggering forward to push a young man against the wall. Lestrade couldn't see anything but a shock of blond hair and one hand waving about as if unsure where to settle on the woman, before Giles gave him a shove.

"They're distracted," he hissed, "go _now_."

He leapt out, long strides carrying him down the alley, and he covered the distance so quickly that the woman – the _vampire_ – had barely looked up from her prey before Lestrade had the stake buried in her chest, hoping to God he'd struck the right spot. Giles had been over and over this with him (closer to the midline than he'd expected, slightly lower down than he'd thought it would be), but still, he'd also emphasized that even the Slayer had missed the heart the first time.

They stood, frozen, for a moment, Lestrade's hand still burying the stake deeper while the woman stared at him wide-eyed and he thought _oh God oh God oh God he's wrong this time, we're wrong, I've killed someone_ –

and then a shriek and she fell to dust.

Lestrade almost collapsed himself in thankfulness. Footsteps rang out as the vampire's intended victim beat the hastiest of all possible retreats, vanishing around a corner in a swirl of black on black.

When he made it back to Giles' concealed spot, the stake still clutched in his hand, the other man was staring down the alley, rubbing his chin with a perplexed look on his face.

"Giles?"

He snapped back to attention. "I thought for a moment – but no…"

Lestrade looked at him for a long moment, but Giles shook his head and said no more.

"Come on, then," grinned Lestrade instead, enjoying the heady rush of adrenaline and relief. "That was just one. We've the whole night ahead of us yet…"

* * *

And now Giles let him do the work. It was Lestrade now who pored over city maps, taking note of unexplained deaths that came to the attention of the Homicide and Serious Crime Command and triangulating from them at home later. Lestrade who chose where they would patrol each night. Lestrade who took the weapons Giles handed to him and used them, with increasing skill, to put an end to creatures that, scant weeks ago, he had been confidently convinced were mythical.

They worked well as a team. In fact, it was a little jarring for Lestrade to realize that they hadn't actually ever done this before – that for all the years he'd known Giles until now, they had been separated by so many things. Now Giles tossed him stakes and he returned (_carefully_) with knives; they protected one another's blind spots and accommodated one another's weaknesses. Night after exhilarating night, they worked, and slowly Lestrade came to understand that Giles was giving him just one more way to protect the people of the city he loved.

And for that, even more, he loved the man.

One night, they got in from patrolling at half two in the morning, giddy with the success of the night's work, and Giles grabbed him and pushed him up against the wall of his flat. The door was still open, the weapons spilling out of their packs plainly visible, but neither of them had the wherewithal to care about that at the moment, as lips met and fingers explored in a way they hadn't done for years.

"Oh, _please_," came an insolent voice from the doorway and they flew apart, both heads snapping around in tandem to the doorway, where an unfamiliar blond man grinned at them from where he leant against the wall.

Lestrade stared, rooted to the spot. He wanted to scramble to pick up the stakes, crosses, the holy water, but the man would have seen all of it already.

Giles' face, though, gave way to a sort of weary anger.

"_Spike._"

"What?" asked Lestrade, then, thinking he understood, scanned the collection of weapons scattered in front of them. "Oh. Which one?"

The man (or no, he must be something else, mustn't he, if Giles wanted to fight him) outside the door snorted. "It's my _name_, bright eyes."

_Oh._ So not an enemy. Maybe. Lestrade looked to Giles, whose expression was still tense with wariness, for guidance.

"What do you want?" his friend growled, and Lestrade could hear the poorly-disguised frustration in his voice.

"Not a conversation I want to have on your doorstep, Sunny Jim. Go on – invite me in."

"Not here," said Giles. "Not until I know what you're after. I can't, anyway; it's not my house."

"Might as well be," said the blond man – Spike – and cocked his head in Lestrade's direction. "_He_ already sees it that way."

The two men exchanged a quick glance, but Spike spoke up again, his tone softer and more sincere this time, his North London accent fading a little. "I'm serious, Watcher. Need to talk to you."

"I'm not a Watcher anymore," said Giles, and Lestrade saw the way his face wrenched when he said it. He also saw, though, the way Spike's face changed as well, softening just for a fraction of a second before settling back into its mocking lines.

"You can let him in, Greg," Giles told him, and the use of his first name set off all kinds of alarm bells. "He won't hurt you."

"Door's open."

Spike laughed. "I'm a _vampire_, numbskull. 's gonna take a bit more than that."

Giles sighed. "You'll have to invite him."

"Invite in a _vampire_? Are you _mad_?"

"Almost certainly," said Giles grimly. "But he's helped me out of more than one tight spot, and he's on our side – I think."

"That's hardly reassuring."

"You've got a bag full of weapons," Spike pointed out from the doorway. "Get yourself a couple of stakes, some holy water, maybe a pair of testicles, and _then_ invite me in."

Twin glares met Spike's casual insult, but Lestrade did kneel to retrieve a stake from one of the backpacks. He offered one to Giles as well, but his weary friend waved away the gesture. "He's killed two Slayers, Greg. He wants to kill us, the stakes aren't going to help."

"_Why_ am I letting him in?"

"Because I have news," Spike replied. "From Sunnydale."

"Please," whispered Giles, and that, more than anything else, made the decision for Lestrade.

"Spike," he said, uncertain as to whether this was supposed to involve some degree of ceremony. "Come in."

It seemed to him that the vampire's saunter as he made his way into the flat was somewhat more exaggerated than it needed to be. When he was inside, he brushed straight past them both, headed for the kitchen, and opened the door to the refrigerator.

"Ah," he said in some surprise. "You were expecting me, then?" He turned back to face them as he asked, a bottle of dark liquid gripped firmly in one hand.

"Oh, _hell_," said Lestrade. "I'll kill him. Sherlock was supposed to have picked that up _ages_ ago."

He averted his gaze and Giles grimaced as Spike tipped the bottle up to drink greedily. "Hmm," said the vampire, looking appraisingly at the bottle, and Lestrade saw that the bones of his face had changed, shifting to the disquieting asymmetry of the vampires they hunted nightly. "Knows his blood, your friend does. Tell him thanks for me," and with a cheeky smile, full of fangs, he downed the rest of it.

Giles glanced apologetically at his friend, but Lestrade shrugged, maintaining his best guess at equanimity. "Saves me having to keep after Sherlock about it. Anything else in there you fancy?" This last to Spike.

"Maybe later," came the dismissive reply. "Watcher," and his face shifted back to human and grew grave, eyes shadowed, as he said the word that meant so much. "We need to talk."

Grudgingly, Lestrade indicated the couch. Spike wrinkled his nose at the clear signs that Giles (and perhaps not _only_ Giles, not every night) had been sleeping there, but he sat on the edge of the lumpy, folded-out mattress anyway. Giles sat down near him, leaving a pointed amount of space between them, and Lestrade sat close to his friend.

"Got yourselves a nice little domestic setup here, have you?"

Lestrade raised an eyebrow at the empty blood bottle still clutched in Spike's hand, but Giles just rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, "I've got no patience for you right now, Spike. You wanted to talk."

Spike nodded. "Listen, you've got to promise you won't do anything rash."

"Oh, _that's_ rich."

"I'm _serious_."

He wondered if it were true that vampires could mesmerize you with their eyes or something. Giles had said it wasn't, but he'd also said that evil didn't play by the rules, and if anyone could hypnotize you with a look, it would be Spike. Lestrade had never seen a gaze so intense.

Giles gave in first, nodding as he settled in on the mattress. "I haven't got much choice, have I?"

"It's about Buf – the Slayer."

In an instant, Giles was back on his feet, pacing the tiny area of carpet visible between the edge of the fold-out bed and the dining table. "What," he asked through gritted teeth, "_what about_ her, Spike? And I warn you, if this is some – "

"They brought her back."

Dead silence.

Giles had stopped pacing and was standing still, face hidden, fists clenched. "What do you mean, 'they brought her – '"

"_They brought her back_, Giles, d'you hear me? The witch and her little playmates. Did their mumbo-jumbo, no doubt paid a nice, hefty price, and now there's… there's…"

And he gave up, dropped his head into his hands, and let his shoulders shake, however imperceptibly. From somewhere in the hunched form came a low, miserable growl. "They didn't even tell me, you know that? They didn't even _tell_ me."

When Giles turned, his expression was frozen in place, face bloodless as he watched Spike break down. His fists tightened, fingers digging into his palms, until another pair of warm hands wrapped around them and pried them apart.

Lestrade guided his friend back to a sitting position, saying quiet, meaningless things to him to keep him grounded. Whatever the hell this was, it was beyond him. Beyond Giles, too, from the look of it, and suddenly he was irrationally angry at Spike.

"What is this? What the _hell_ did you just tell him?" He'd heard the words, but they meant nothing to him.

Spike raised his head to look at him, and Lestrade was struck by the pale face, reddened eyes, dishevelled hair. It jolted him straight back to the days of Sherlock's addiction, detoxing in Lestrade's living room and sobbing with the mood swings brought on by withdrawal. Only – and he found he couldn't maintain the momentum of his anger, because Spike's grief here was not a result of drugs or self-inflicted damage; this was real.

_It's about the Slayer. They brought her back._

Dead, she was dead, and they brought her back. But that was only – but she couldn't be –

What happened if a Slayer was turned into a vampire?

He voiced the thought, and Spike, despite everything, rolled his eyes. "She's not a _vampire_, you gormless twat. She's just… alive. I guess."

_Resurrection? _Giles had said it was against the laws of nature and magic.

But 'against the laws' didn't mean impossible.

Giles spoke for the first time. "I'm – I should – I have to go…" He trailed off into silence again, trying to stand but held firmly in place by Lestrade's hands on his shoulders. "I need to…"

"_No_," Spike said urgently. "You can't tell 'em I was here."

"What about the Slayer?" Lestrade asked, feeling like he was taking advantage of a weakness Spike had not meant to reveal. "He's her Watcher. Won't she want him there? Won't she _need _him?"

"What do _you _know about it, anyway?" was the response, but Lestrade had known Sherlock for a long time now and knew that Spike's words carried more self-defence than real aggression. "Just… wait for them to call, all right? You know they will. In over their heads, every one of them."

He looked up at Lestrade, and his eyes were not so wild anymore. "_You_ deal with _him_," he said. "I've gotta go. And _don't _tell them I was here."

And Spike was out of the front door and away before Lestrade could even have attempted to stop him.

Not that he would have tried, because it was about then that Giles collapsed in on himself, burying his face in his arms and shuddering violently. There was no way Lestrade would consider going anywhere or doing anything while his friend was like that.

Instead, he just folded Giles into his arms and sat helplessly beside him, able to do nothing but simply be there with him. This was beyond him. He could understand losing someone you loved; he'd been there – and getting them back… well, with the warm press of Giles' shoulder against his side, the tweed coat slung negligently over the arm of the couch, he'd been _there_, too. But not this, not with laws both natural and unnatural broken, not when the getting back was something that should never have been allowed.

Lestrade didn't know how long it was before Giles broke the silence, but he knew his legs were stiff, back aching, arms numb and bloodless around his friend when the words finally came.

"Lestrade, I… I… this is – wrong…"

"I know," he replied softly. "You can't undo death. You told me."

"No," was Giles' whispered response. "Not that. I…" and his voice gained volume, gained strength and anger and self-loathing. "I'm _hoping_, don't you see? I'm _hoping_."

"Why is that wrong?"

"All of it is wrong. If it's true – if Buffy really is back – there could be unimaginable consequences. For – for the Hellmouth, for the _world_, perhaps, but…"

Lestrade waited.

"But I don't _care_. The only thing I care about is if she – if she's really… and the only consequences that matter to me are the consequences for _her_. What does that make me, Lestrade?"

Memories of the way he'd felt when Giles had shown up, half-dead, on his doorstep. Memories of sleepless nights spent pacing his living room when he hadn't known where Sherlock was or what he might be doing.

"What does that make you?" he repeated, resting his head against his friend's shoulder. "_Human_, Giles. It makes you human."

It might have been the longest night they'd ever spent together, not moving, not talking, not knowing what it was they were waiting for until grey fingers of five o'clock dawn crept across them where they sat.

A phone rang. They both froze for a moment, until Lestrade realized it was his mobile, still in his trouser pocket, and tossed it behind them one-handed, neither answering nor checking to see who was calling. It could have been the bloody commissioner and he wouldn't have cared; anyone who needed him right now could damn well wait.

They resumed silence, stillness, togetherness.

Again, a phone rang. The landline, this time, so there was no mistaking.

"You'd better answer that," Lestrade said. If it was the call they were expecting, it wasn't going to be for him, and if anyone else was ringing, he wasn't interested anyway.

Giles looked at him, long and hard and with no words to convey what his eyes were saying, and then shuffled into the kitchen to pick up the handset.

"Hello?"

* * *

It wasn't the first time Greg Lestrade had stood next to Rupert Giles in an airport, waiting for a plane to take his best friend halfway around the world with no clear idea of what he would find there and no way to know if he would ever be back.

It wasn't the first time he had silently supported his friend, one hand on Giles' kit bag, the other clutching the receipt from the taxi like his life depended on it.

It wasn't the first time he had clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders and prepared to watch Giles walk away, forcibly tugging the corners of his mouth into some semblance of a smile, pretending that he didn't mind, it was all fine, they had things to do and lives to live.

It _was_ the first time he had ever stood here knowing why Giles had to leave and understanding just how quietly vital his friend was, not just to him, but to a whole host of people in California, to the continued existence of the entire world, and most of all, to one girl. True, a girl who was stronger and more powerful than anyone Lestrade had ever known; a girl who was, in some unfathomable way, the Chosen One; a girl who might be some sort of… ghost or zombie or something, he had no idea; but most of all, a girl it was Giles' duty to look after and his privilege to stand beside no matter what came their way.

He knew Giles had to go back. He'd overheard Giles' side of the telephone call in his flat two days earlier; he knew it was true, and he understood. That didn't have to make it any easier.

Giles looked up from the travel papers in his hand and forced a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. Lestrade tried to smile back, but only managed a sort of resigned twist of the mouth, a sort of _we both know you have to go, but neither of us has to like it_.

"I will be back, you know."

He might be, Lestrade thought. He also might not. Apocalypses and angry gods aside, if even London was as overrun with vampires and demons as he'd learnt, then there was no way living on a Hellmouth was going to let Giles promise him anything.

Still, they maintained the fiction, like they always had. "Yeah. I know."

"Someday. Soon."

"Right."

Giles hefted his bag and tilted his head in the direction of the gate. _LAX_, the screen on the wall blinked, and the boarding time was barely ten minutes away.

"How'd you get that past security, anyway?" Lestrade wanted to know. He suspected that Giles' rather extensive collection of weaponry had made it through the scanners in much the same way as his Metropolitan Police warrant card (actually in his pocket for once, instead of in Sherlock's) had allowed him through the gates at customs despite international law – namely, that their easy passage had something to do with Sherlock's mysterious brother.

He'd have to ask Sherlock about it later. Owing Mycroft a favour seemed like a dangerous position to be in.

"Why wouldn't it get past security?"

"Well, you know, it _is_ full of – " he dropped his voice " – knives, wooden stakes, a _crossbow_…"

"No, it isn't."

What?

"It isn't?"

"I left all of that at yours."

_What?_

"Why would you leave your hunting gear at mine? Have you forgotten about the Hellmouth you're flying home to?"

"Oh, believe me, there's no shortage of weapons in Sunnydale," said Giles, with a wry – but genuine – grin. "There are plenty more where those came from. And you'll be needing them."

"I… what?"

Giles clapped him on the shoulder. "Someone has to look after London, Lestrade, and the Watchers' Council are the last people I would trust with the job."

Look after London? He couldn't look after London. There were his police duties to worry about, and his team, and the paperwork, and Sherlock… he could barely manage to look after himself, let alone an entire city of innocent people.

He needed to protest, tell Giles this was a bad idea, tell him he needed to find someone stronger and more capable, tell him he'd chosen the wrong person. He tried to argue, "I can't – "

But before he could get the words out, Giles held up one hand to silence him and said, "You already do."

His mouth snapped shut, the words he'd meant to say trailing off unspoken. He thought of days spent at gruesome crime scenes, searching for a microscopic fragment of evidence that might bring a killer to justice. Evenings plying Sherlock with cold case files, making sure that the younger man had somewhere to be and something to occupy his mind, making sure that no murders remained unsolved in his small part of the city. Nights crouched in dim alleyways, watching and waiting for impossible things to show themselves so that he could remove them from the world without the world's ever knowing he had done it.

Protecting London, eh?

Perhaps he might not be the wrong man, after all.

An unintelligible announcement came over the loudspeaker, and they both looked toward Giles' gate. Passengers were queuing at the kiosk, preparing to board.

"That's me, I'm afraid," Giles said softly.

"Right."

"You know I wouldn't leave if…"

"If you didn't have to. Yeah."

Giles stepped back. "Well…"

Lestrade frowned and shook his head. This was not how his friend – his mentor – the man he loved – was going to leave.

He stepped into Giles' space, caught hold of him with one hand at the back of his neck, fingers threading through short hair. They didn't kiss, not here, not now, but he rested his forehead against Giles', breathing deeply, letting the contact say everything he couldn't put into words.

It was enough. It had to be.

The loudspeaker sounded again; the queue at the gate was almost gone.

Giles pulled back, met his friend's gaze. "Here's lookin' at you, kid."

Lestrade couldn't help it; he laughed. "You're not going to let the last thing you say to me be a hackneyed line from an old movie, are you?"

"Hackneyed? Blasphemy!"

"Well, _you_ think _Fully Loaded_ is the epitome of art rock."

"And _you_ think the spoken section of 'Nights in White Satin' was a good idea."

"Shut up," and this time Lestrade did kiss him, and they gripped one another tightly, just for a moment.

And then Giles really did have to leave, stepping away with a whispered, "You know if there's anything you need…"

Lestrade nodded briefly. "I know. Of course I know. What are you still doing here? _Go._"

He waited at the gate, watching through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows until the aeroplane his friend was on had disappeared from sight, off to one of the interminable Heathrow runways and then to somewhere in America. It was only when the flight number disappeared from the departure boards, replaced by the next flight's time and destination, that he turned and walked away.

As he did, he thought of the weapons cache waiting for him at home in his flat. He thought of the guitar lying on his bed, the scattered albums on his living room floor, the half-eaten breakfasts they had both abandoned to make it to the airport in time, bolting their food in a rush because they'd gotten in so late from the previous night's patrolling.

So that was what Giles thought he ought to do, then. Greg Lestrade, protector of London?

Yeah, all right.

He could do that.


End file.
